Glowing Bacteria
15 April 2007
The original article for this post was actually carried by the BBC News a while back, but I thouht it was worth some
discussion here.
The news announcement in question talks about some work done by Steve Rimmer’s research group at the University of Sheffield. Their research is basically about how to generate lumiscence when a specific biological binding happens. What this would enable is that when one of the customized tags they create comes into contact with the specific pathogen it is specific to, the tag will generate
luminescence. Their work focuses primarily on the tag design coupling the work in flourescent
polymers with the work on biological specific binding agents. I really like that their application is in portable detection of pathogens or bio-threats. To
the right is an image of anthrax (Top:not using this technique) and the second image is one from the Rimmer group website looking at bio-luminescnence detection (specifically: Bottom: Micrograph showing fluorescent particles inside dermal fibroblast cells (blue = particles, red = F-actin)). One specific application the article mentions is the ability to spread a gel of their material into a open wound and quickly determine the presence of bacteria or instance.
I think this is an excellent example of convergence in technology to solve problems. In this case they are combining advances in portable optics and microelectronics, the large biochemistry advancement in target specific binding, and their experise which is the design of highly specialized polymeric units designed for light emission and luminescence. This is a perfect example of “Convergence Problem Solving”, leveraging advances in adjacent fields with your core piece of expertise of technology to really do something beyond the scope of any of the individual pieces of technology you are combining.
Look at this post for how I use this as the basic example for a creativity and ideation examples.
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