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Functionalised gold nanoparticles make a more efficient and versatile delivery system for use in gene therapy and cancer treatment, claim Korean scientists. Gold nanoparticles are non-toxic and easily made and so provide an effective way to deliver therapeutic antisense DNA to disease causing genes. Antisense DNA that is covalently attached to the nanoparticles will bind to messenger RNA of a disease causing gene, preventing translation and therefore inactivating it. But previous systems could deliver only antisense DNA that was covalently cross-linked to gold nanoparticles, which needed to be individually synthesized for each gene of interest. Now, Kangseok Lee and Min Su Han at...

US scientists have developed a sensor system for profiling the protein content of human blood serum without needing individual receptors for each separate protein. The technique could be used to provide cheap preliminary disease diagnosis information, saving time and money by reducing unnecessary testing.There is a direct link between levels of protein in human serum and disease, making protein levels an attractive target for sensors and diagnostics. However, with over 20,000 proteins present in human serum at a range of different concentrations, developing an effective sensor has been a challenging task.Pattern recognition sensing uses detector systems that interact with many...

Enlarge ImageColor code. A new data-storage technique encodes multiple sets of data in the same area using different colors and polarizations of light.Credit: Adapted from Peter Zijlstra et al., Nature 459, 410 (2009) Better clear a shelf in your basement for that high-end Blu-ray DVD player you just bought. Researchers report that they can boost the amount of data stored on a disc 10,000-fold by using gold nanoparticles. If commercialized, the technology could allow a single disc to hold as many as 300 movies or 250,000 songs. Today's CDs and DVDs store data as a string of pits burned...