New Materials Can Self-Replicate

One of the hallmarks of living things is self-replication, the ability to make new copies of biological structures. Scientists have harnessed this ability in several ways, using DNA and viruses to organize materials for things like solar panels. But inducing artificial self-replication, which would enable new types of self-fabricating materials, has proven more difficult. Now researchers at New York University say they’ve taken a step in that direction, building a complex artificial system that can self-replicate.

The researchers started with artificial DNA tile motifs, which are tiny arrangements of DNA. Just like the base pairs of DNA, the tiles each serve as a letter, each of which pairs with another specific letter. DNA’s A-T and G-C pairs form the molecule’s double helix. In this case, the tiles were made of artificial bent triple-helix molecules, each containing three DNA double helices. The researchers wanted to use this motif to seed the creation of a new structure, which would be based on the rules established by the seed.

To do this, they created a sequence of seven tiles, or seven “words,” to serve as the seed, and placed the molecules in a solution. There it matched up with complementary tiles, and assembled into a daughter array. Then the molecules were heated up, separating the daughter tiles from the seed. The process started again, with the daughter array matching with new complementary tiles and assembling a granddaughter array — and so on.

The second-generation tiles reproduced the same sequence as the seed word, without any enzymes or other biological triggers, according to the NYU team.

It’s worth noting that the seed word was pretty much arbitrary — so the work shows that self-replicating materials can be created from any seed composition, said Paul Chaikin, an NYU physics professor and one of the study's co-authors, said in a university news release.

This is a long way from being used in materials fabrication, of course, but the work shows it is possible.

“Our findings raise the tantalizing prospect that we may one day be able to realize self-replicating materials with various patterns or useful functions,” the researchers write.

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Posted in: biological,biology,enzymes,materials,molecules,New Materials Can Self-Replicate,solar panel

Energy From Proteins In Cow Brains

Could build better batteries, solar cells.

When we think of farming energy, we generally think of feedstocks like corn that can be processed into ethanol, or perhaps other plant life we can culture and harvest like algae. But don't underestimate the livestock; we've recently seen methane-trapping schemes that can power farms and giant cattle treadmills that turn idle dairy drones into power-producing machines. Now, a team of Stanford researchers wants to use a protein found in cow brains to make better batteries.

The concept centers on a particular protein called clathrin, which has a unique knack for assembling itself into versatile structures that foster the formation of complex molecules. Clathrin is present in every cell in the human body, but cows possess a vast wealth of it in their bovine brains that make them an ideal source for the stuff. And given the right biochemical directions, researchers think they can coax clathrin into creating better batteries and solar cells.

In cells, clathrin plays a key role in cell transport. Its tripod-like structure allows it to create a honeycomb-like lattice on the outer surface of cell walls. Atoms and molecules then attach themselves to clathrin according to the protein's will; when the right cargo is attached, the lattice collapses inward, pinching off the cell wall and delivering it's molecular payload into the cell's interior.

It's this ability to connect into structures and lure in the right molecules that makes clathrin an ideal candidate for creating battery electrodes and solar cells. Scientists can bend clathrin to their will relatively easily, coaxing it into a variety of very useful skeletal structures that they can then attach molecules to. By adding the right blend of inorganic atoms or molecules, the researchers can create electrodes, catalysts, and other battery cell building blocks.

The group has already mashed up gold and titanium dioxide into a material they call "titania" that has photocatalytic properties that allow it turn sunlight into a catalyst for water splitting. Other materials are in the works, all aimed at turning chemicals or sunlight into sweet, sweet energy. Show us an ear of corn that can do that.

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Posted in: cells,Energy From Proteins In Cow Brains,material,molecules

Quantum reality

                    Strange world of quantum theory has inspired a multitude of interpretations that contain some fascinating ideas on one hand, and on the other, downright eccentric. 

                    Quantum theory is a scientific masterpiece - but physicists are still not sure how to interpret it. A century, it seems, is not enough. One hundred years ago in Brussels, Belgium, held the first global conference on topics in physics. The subject in question was new and strange interpretation of quantum theory and if it ever be possible to put the ideas into agreement with our everyday experience that will provide us such a coherent world. 

                    It is a question that physicists war even today. Quantum particles, such as atoms and molecules have strange ability to appear in two places at once, to rotate clockwise and vice-versa at the same time, or affect each other instantly when they are separated by a half universe. The problem is that we too are all made ​​of atoms and molecules, but we can not do any of this. Why? "At what point shall cease to apply quantum mechanics?" asks Harvey Brown, a philosopher of science at the University of Oxford. 

                   

                    Although the answer is still to be expected, the struggle to make one, proves to be the reward of this effort.

                    This is because, for example, has created the new field of quantum computation that has gained attention in the high-tech corporations and government intelligence agencies. It gives us a new approach to the problem of formulating a theory of everything in physics, even we could provide details about the origin of the universe. As the talk of enterprise of a cynical and skeptical scientist on the field of quantum mechanics - Albert Einstein - has rejected classifying it as a "soft pillow", which urges physicists to sleep.  

                    Unfortunately for Einstein quantum theory proved to be a masterpiece. No experiment has come to disagree with his predictions and can say with confidence that the theory is a rigorous way to describe how the universe works on a microscopic scale. Which brings us face to face with one last question: What does this theory mean?

                     Physicists try to answer this question using the so-called "interpretations" - philosophical speculation, fully compliant with the experiments, of the quantum theory. "There is a real zoo of interpretations," said Vlatko Vedra, who divides his time between Oxford University and the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore. 

                     No scientific theory has been seen from so many different angles. How so? And will any of the interpretations prevail at the expense of others? Let's refer, for example, to the approach that is now known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, introduced by the danish physicist Niels Bohr. It states essentially that any attempt to speak, for example, the position of an electron in an atom, is meaningless in the absence of measurements.

                     Only when interacting with an electron trying to see using a non-quantum, or "classic" device, it gets the attributes that we would call physical properties and thus becomes part of reality. There are alternative interpretation of history, which explains the strangeness of quantum theory through the idea that any object exists in multiple versions of countless parallel universes. Or maybe you prefer Broglie-Bohm interpretation, in which quantum theory is considered incomplete: we lack certain properties hidden in the presence of which it would make sense. 

                     There are plenty of other interpretations, such as Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber interpretation, transactional interpretation (which uses the idea that particles traveling backward in time, tachyons), Roger Penrose's interpretation is that it speaks of a collapse due to gravitational forces, modal interpretation .. . in the last 100 years, the zoo interpretations of quantum mechanics has become a crowded and noisy place. 

Despite this widespread agitation, there are a few interpretations that seem to matter to most physicists.

  

                    

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Posted in: albert einstein,electron,matter,molecules,physics,quantum,quantum mechanics,theory,universes