Oh this is very cool. Glad to see Bozhi's work getting some attention. A friend of mine is co-mentored by Bozhi and my graduate advisor, and was working on some very neat experiments using this technology to trigger specific responses in T-cells. Basically, the gold nanowires can be used to trigger a membrane voltage differential, and theoretically trigger a calcium flux and then a downstream immune response without an antigen. I know they had successes with nerve cells, and I'm hopeful the T-cell results will show similar success.
Edit: Properly reading the article, it looks like this is either slightly older work, or a different experiment from the one I'm familiar with, which did show success in nerve cells last time I saw the talk on it (and used gold, or gold-silicon, my memory is fuzzy now, nanowires).
My thought was immediately gone to using these nanowires to trigger excitatory bursts in localized areas of the brain, solving issues like microseizures (or possibly large scale seizures also) or performing extremely precise electrical therapy. However as the article says, these cells don't have the same transmembrane transport mechanisms (wrongly called phagocytosis by the article) they relied on so this would need more research, but the fact the wires can generate an electrical potential across the membrane is huge in itself and the rest can come.
However, the application of drug transport is also amazing. Currently a lot of research is performed on lipid transports (microbubbles, etc.) or capsule-like nanostructures to carry hydrophilic or oversized molecules across the cell membranes. Stimulation of membrane-mediated transport for any molecule just by attaching a chemically inert nanowire to them would be AMAZING.
Is this different than cells self-impaling on asbestos fibers because the Si nano-wires are smaller? In the video from TFA it showed some cells with wires going through them that were longer than the cell's diameter.
This was my question as well. There are some studies showing that carbon nanotubes can be as dangerous as asbestos, so it seems likely silicon nanowires could be as well:
However, if they can make the nanowires shorter than the minimum dimension of a human cell then it likely wouldn't cause the same sort of cancers as asbestos.
"Eat" is used very inappropriately here. As far as I know the cells aren't burning the nanowires for fuel. A more correct term would be that silicon nanowires can cross a cell membrane through phagocytosis, which I don't find that surprising.
There are non-nutrition definitions, but those concern wear/destruction of a large object by a small object, not engulfment of small object by large object.
That explains why my dog doesn't understand me when I tell her not to eat the furniture, or rocks. I should just tell her, "don't take in any more rocks!"
That should work, once she understands that she is embarrassing herself and showing a poor command of language by eating non-food, she'll stop!
(It's something she grew out of, like eating logs if they were rotten enough. I don't know if she had pica or was just an even more enthusiastic chewer than the usual puppy)
This article contains a crapload of speculation that goes well beyond what was actually accomplished:
>"But before Tian’s group can turn the phenomenon into a tool, they must first understand how exactly a cell will eat a piece of silicon nanowire, and what happens to it once it’s inside the cell. That’s what the group did in today’s report.
[...]
The process is called phagocytosis"
>"phagocytosis (from Ancient Greek φαγεῖν (phagein) , meaning "to devour", κύτος, (kytos) , meaning "cell", and -osis, meaning "process") is the process by which a cell—often a phagocyte or a protist—engulfs a solid particle"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocytosis
So, here is what was really accomplished here (according to this summary). Some researchers asked: "How does a cell eat a silicon nanowire?" They got the answer: "by eating it".
That said, it seems like a useful thing to know that this substance will be phagocytosed. I wish they gave more context though, eg is the nanowire biologically inert, is there something special about the silicon here, etc.
I thought science is not supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be filling out an endless series of grants, which no one will ever inspect very closely, that have mind numbing page-length, formatting, etc rules along with satisfying other miscellaneous approval paperwork and IT/safety training.
I immediately through of other cellular structures that are essentially one dimensional: microtubules, 20nm thick; actin filaments 7nm; DNA bare filament 2nm; chromatin 30nm; cell membrane 10nm; aquaporin 5nm (diameter); water molecule 0.275nm, etc. How thick are these silicone nanotubes?
A wire can be embedded in 2 or 3 (or N) dimensions, and if the only degree of freedom for travelling along the wire is forward and back (no thickness), then it can also be considered a one-dimensional line.
I think the use of the word 'essentially' signifies that the definition of thickness depends on the domain you're examining. In this case, I'd expect we're talking about the connectedness of chemical bonds. No thickness should mean it's a chain of atoms each with only 2 bonds, to the atoms before and after it in the chain.
I believe what the mean to say by "essentially" is the only relevant dimension in this case would be the length, as the thickness is negligible, given the domain under consideration.
Edit: Properly reading the article, it looks like this is either slightly older work, or a different experiment from the one I'm familiar with, which did show success in nerve cells last time I saw the talk on it (and used gold, or gold-silicon, my memory is fuzzy now, nanowires).