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Hitherto, despite numerous attempts, no one had ever succeeded in reproducing this complex structure artificially. But now, Prof. Ehud Gazit of Tel Aviv University’s faculty of life sciences has found a way to create an artificial structure similar to a dog’s nose, using nanotubes with a diameter about one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. In a few years, he predicted, this nanotechnology could be used to build extremely sensitive detectors, changing existing methods of detecting drugs or explosives.
For instance, Gazit said, detectors 3.3 feet [1 meter] in size that were capable of scenting explosives from afar could be erected in airports. “It would be a kind of imitation dog’s nose, but a nose that scents explosives from kilometers away instead of meters,” he said.
For years, Gazit studied the creation and arrangement of nanotubes made of simple proteins known as dipeptides, which can easily be manufactured in industrial quantities. Three years ago, after Gazit and his team managed to create the nanotubes, they were faced with how these tiny components could be made to act as the researchers wanted them to. “In general, we don’t have the tools to utilize the potential of nanometric structures,” Gazit explained. “They are so small that it is virtually impossible to move them mechanically.”
One solution was a controlled evaporation of the material, in which the dipeptides were dissolved, which caused them to align in the same direction. The second technique involved attaching magnetic nanoparticles to the nanotubes, and then subjecting the nanotubes to an external magnetic field.
Aligned nanotubes increase the sensitivity by a factor of 100,000 or more. This would enable the detector to detect even a single molecule of explosives. Gazit firmly believes that within the next decade, nanotechnology will burst the bounds of the laboratory and have a great many uses.
For more information: 972-3-640-9030, www.tau.ac.il, ehudg@post.tac.ac.il.
By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz
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