ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

NanoTechnology 213
applied to the sample stage may attract and immobilize charged biomolecules
rendering them easier to locate and study (Lindsay, 1987).
Potential applications of STM to biology and medicine include repetitive
imaging and structural mapping of living material, nondestructive study of
dynamical structural changes such as protein receptors (via alterations in the AFM
mode), detection of possible propagating phonons or solitons (using the multiple
STM configurations, one tip can perturb and another detect perturbation at a
second position on a macromolecule or polymer), spectroscopic analysis (i.e.
DNA base pair reading, cytoskeletal lattice communication), and real time
imaging (via high speed scanning) of living structures can expand the horizons of
experimental biosciences. Further, a capability for nanoscale manipulation of
biomaterials and organelles offers a host of imaginative possibilities. For instance,
a few dozen multitip STM/FMs might be developed to directly extract,
manipulate, analyze, and modify DNA or other cellular components, thereby
greatly assisting some subfields of genetic engineering and medical research.
Synthesis or modulation of important biological molecules which are
“topologically complex” (e.g. receptors, enzymes, antibodies, cytoskeleton)
which may be difficult and relatively expensive using present day synthetic
chemistry, could ultimately be feasible with STM/FMs. Feynman (1961)
commented that great progress may be expected in biology when “you can simply
look at, and work with individual molecules.” STM/FMs could help materialize
some even grander biomedical applications when used in combination with
genetic engineering: to create, modify, or program micro-organisms for
therapeutic uses.
Ettinger (1972):
If we can design sufficiently complex behavior patterns into
microscopically small organisms, there are obvious and endless
possibilities, some of the most important in the medical area.
Perhaps we can create guardian and scavenger organisms in the
blood, superior to the leukocytes and other agents of our human
heritage, that will efficiently hunt down and clean out a wide variety
of hostile or damaging invaders.
Asimov (1981) suggests that we:
Consider the bacteria. These are tiny living things made up of single
cells far smaller than the cells in plants and animals ... . [We] can, by
properly designing these tiniest slaves of ours, use them to reshape
the world itself and build it close to our hearts’ desire ... .
White (1969) proposed a similar notion for programmable cell repair
machines:
appropriate genetic information can be introduced by means of
artificially constructed virus particles into a congenitally defective
cell for remedy (and) ... repair. The repair program must use (the
cells own protein synthesis and metabolic pathways to diagnose and
repair any damage.
Approaches to biomedical nanotechnology relying solely on genetic/protein
engineering and self assembly (Asimov, 1981; Aridane, 1983; Drexler, 1981,
1986) are severely constrained by the lack of direct control and observation: the
potential attributes of STM/FMs. Hybrids and components of organisms,
cytoskeletal structures, viruses, and synthetic structures may evolve, facilitated by
STM/FM capabilities, to fabricate, examine, and modify nanostructures. Ettinger