Here was a very elegant application of nanotechnology:
http://www.physorg.com/news3704.html
Nano-particles which bind to maligant cells and then heat up under infra-red radiation, in order to destroy the cancer cells.
Remember how I was talking about using tiny-sized transceivers to transmit information directly into the cell? Well, imagine using some nano-sized particle to recieve an EM signal, not unlike in this application, and this is then used to convey information right into the cell and have it expressed into polypeptide or nucleic acid sequences.
You would mate this nano-particle bandgap device to an appropriate synthesis device like a ribosome for example, so that it could synthesize an enzyme based on information recieved from the outside world (ex vivo).
Or what if you wanted to synthesize an artificial chromosome right inside the cell? You might want to do this locally inside the cell because you're worried that the chromosome is too large and fragile a structure to be transported reliably across membranes into cells hundreds of millions of times. So you decide to instead infiltrate these nano-transceivers into the many cells of your body. Once there, they will manufacture whatever nucleotide sequence you transmit to them.
With tiny-sized transceivers, you don't have to worry about DNA information storage density, since you can beam in as much data as you want from the outside. You don't have to worry about your vector-delivered gene payload being corrupted on the way into the cell. You just beam in the information upon arrival.
Or maybe you don't have to worry about maintaining a fragile nuclear DNA or mito-DNA data repository inside your nucleus or mitochondria. You just beam in the information when you need it.
If there's no data repository at all in the cells, then it can't get oxidized or mutated by ROS, now can it? Maybe you wouldn't even need to have epigenetic agents to trigger genes -- maybe you don't need any locally-sited logic/control hardware at all -- maybe you can control it all through wireless control.
Or, going back to simpler stuff, imagine that these nano-particles are able to target lipofuscin clumps somehow -- perhaps by binding with it and then destroying them with heat supplied by external infra-red or terahertz sources.
But I think this EM-broadcasting/beaming stuff could come in handy, one way or the other.
What do you all think?
