ETERNAL LIFE (Part 26)

The following continues the serialization of Chapter 2 from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity:

Nanobiotechnology

One of my final tasks as a University of Hawaii faculty member was to chair a search committee for three MarBEC (the National Science Foundation Marine BioProducts Engineering Center) positions. We had the freedom to select any field we wanted, so the committee chose protein engineering, bioinformatics and bionanotechnology. I actually wrote the requirements for bionanotechnology. We found good candidates for the other two, but never did recruit anyone for the third. We hired Guangyi Wang, a post-doc of Jay Keasling in the Cal Berkeley Chemical Engineering Department, who went on to lead a team gaining a majestic grant of $42.5 million from the Gates Foundation to design molecules capable of doing what is usually in the province of microorganisms. I asked Jay how close he was to patenting the cure for malaria and how I could buy stock in his company. He just laughed. The chemical engineering of synthetic biology should someday prevail over the natural process because these drugs could then be produced ten times more cheaply. During this process I was also on the PhD committee of a political science candidate doing his dissertation in nanotechnology. Alas, he never graduated.

Nanotechnology deals with the study of very small things from 1 to 100 nanometers. A nanometer (nm) is one billionth, or 10^-9, of a meter, which is like comparing a marble to Planet Earth. A DNA double-helix has a diameter of about 2 nm and a bacterium is in the range of 200 nm. Hair grows faster than one nm/second. Japanese scientist Norio Taniguchi coined the term in 1974 and American engineer Kim Eric Drexler wrote a book describing molecular nanotechnology in 1986. The notion of nanorobots to scavenge, say, cancer cells, has received some science fiction press, but no obvious way has been advanced on how to manufacture these nano-critters.

The solution might rest in the synthesis of nanotechnology and molecular biology into a branch called nanobiotechnology. I thought I was inventing the term, only to learn that a National Science Foundation Nanobiotechnology Center was being established in 2000 at Cornell University, as a partnership with Princeton, other universities and industry. Microfabrication is just about becoming real. Nanomanufacturing will be 1000 times more difficult.

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The Dow Jones Industrials went up 83 to 9218, while major world markets almost all increased, save for Japan and Norway. At one time, we set the trend, but it is appearing more and more that we are now following what happens around the globe. Gold crept up $4/toz to $942 and crude oil entered $70/barrel territory.

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The Pacific now has four storms: Tropical Storm Guillermo, which has weakened to 40 MPH, is moving west, north of Hawaii, Tropical Depression Maka, at 40 MPH, is moving west away from Hawaii and, out of nowhere, Typhoon Vamco, now at already 75 MPH, is moving northwest, and should strengthen to a Category 3, but is still far away from any populated area. There is also a disturbance south and east of Maka.

In the Atlantic, Bill is now at 125 MPH, and should strengthen into a Category 4 monster. However, there is every expectation that there should be a more northerly movement to keep it away from the U.S.