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Designing Nanostructures at the Interface between Biomedical and Physical Systems Conference Focus Group Summaries (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Design Principles of Living Systems
Pages 67-72

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 67...
... The success of this work can be of tremendous societal and economic rewards. While the basic functions of a human organ are generally understood, the feasibility of fabricating nano or micro devices on a chip that supply the same biological, chemical, and electrical activities as those of a human organ has only been explored recently.
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From page 68...
... Andreou, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University · Raymond Dean Astumian, Professor, Department of Physics, University of Maine · Prabhakar Bandaru, Assistant Professor, Materials Science Program, University of California, San Diego · Maria Bellantone, Editor, Nature · Jeff Byers, Doctor, Institute for Nanoscience, Naval Research Laboratory
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From page 69...
... Among the 17 experts gathered, amidst backgrounds ranging from materials science to vascular biology, everyone had a slightly different speculation about the intention behind the phrase. Was it a charge to build a microfluidic system that would give quasihuman responses to drugs -- a kind of biomolecular crash-test dummy intended to speed up the expensive early trial phases of drug discovery?
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From page 70...
... They reworked their group's title into "Design Principles of Living Systems," at the cell level, and designed a device called a multiplexed dynamic force spectroscopy array. Inside a human cell, the workings of a single protein -- how the long chain of peptides kinks or untangles in order to hide or expose active links-isn't solely dictated by regulatory enzymes or chemical triggers in the environment.
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From page 71...
... For more advanced studies, more proteins could be added to the same nanowires or to nearby sets of nanowires to see how the proteins react. Donald Ingber of Harvard Medical School, who was chosen to act as spokesperson for the group, suggested that a good first object of study would be fibronectin, a relatively well-understood glycoprotein responsible for binding cell membranes to the extracellular matrix that holds multiple cells together.
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Key Terms

  • boston university
  • human organ
  • design principles
  • allowing researchers
  • science writing

  • vascular biology
  • writing student
  • stu hutson
  • donald ingber
  • graduate science

  • basic human
  • human body
  • volume gas
  • imaging technique
  • human cell

  • accurately model
  • sheared outward
  • chemical triggers
  • possibly chemical
  • molecules targeted

  • chemical weapons
  • mechanically relevant
  • uncertainty arises
  • identify acoustic
  • minor changes

  • electric pulses
  • van der
  • scientific principles
  • medical treatments
  • current understanding


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