Principal Investigator Joseph Jacobson
Project Website http://ttt.media.mit.edu/research/ecb.html
Nature has created biological machines that perform functions with amazing precision and accuracy. We are interested in taking control of these machines and using them to perform functions at will. Currently we are developing a new means of controlling biological activity by electronic methods that manipulates these machines on the molecular and nanometer scale.
We have developed a technique for externally addressing biomolecules by covalently attaching nanocrystals which serve as antennas. The gold nanocrystal antennas are heated by an external alternating magnetic field and transfer the heat to the biomolecule. The heating effect can be used to dehybridize DNA and also regulate enzymatic activity of a protein. This project is in collaboration with the Center for Biomedical Engineering.