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ANCIENT BACTERIA twice in evolution learned how to enter animal and plant cells and direct the entire metabolism of each host. This incredible feat of reprogramming and hijacking the host metabolic machinery is something that scientists today are incapable of doing. This reprogramming is so nuanced that it can adapt to almost all host cellular and disease conditions. View in LinkedIn

MECHANOELECTRIC COUPLING in lizard cochlear hair cells accounts for some of the observed properties. One of hundreds of examples in nature. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0378595582900454 View in LinkedIn

THIS ENDS this weekend's excursion into the fascinating sense of smell, hard on the heels of the sense of taste last weekend. Next weekend will cover how the microbial world within us interacts with these receptors. View in LinkedIn

FUNDAMENTALLY NEW PROPERTIES. "Coupling between electrical and mechanical phenomena is a universal feature of many inorganic materials and virtually all biological systems. Similar to transport, optical, and magnetic phenomena, the nanoscale can also enable completely new types of electromechanical behavior." https://lnkd.in/efupmXS View in LinkedIn

"DOGS can smell cancer and diabetes," detecting volatile organic molecules associated with the diseases. The illusive quest for an e-nose continues. https://lnkd.in/emBjZwq View in LinkedIn

NANO PROPERTIES DIFFER. "In the past two decades, the concept of “small is different” has been established for a wide variety of phenomena, including electrical, optical, magnetic, and mechanical properties of materials." Or, a snowflake is not a glacier. These radically different properties open up new programmability options in ordinary materials. https://lnkd.in/efupmXS View in LinkedIn

REMEMBER IRIDESCENCE? The radiant natural colors of peacock feathers, beetles, seashells, often employing complex photonic crystal lattices, are ways of asymmetrically separating and gating photons of light to then display reflectivity or constructive or destructive interference characteristic of a diffraction gating. Humans have coincidentally used similar methods to develop transistors and semiconductors, at the heart of our modern electronics. View in LinkedIn

MANIPULATION or programming of physical materials in the engineering and physics world depends largely on how electrons, light, magnetic and other properties can be asymmetrically gated, combined, or otherwise differentiated through specific channels at a nano scale. Understanding these phenomena opens the door to programmability. Biology has been using these techniques for millennia. View in LinkedIn

"PROGRAMMABLE MATTER at its most basic level is designing a material that has components within it with instructions for self-assembly. Basically you’re trying to mimic what nature does, and nature does a superb job of creating all sorts of objects that self-assemble." https://lnkd.in/ewiHcjY View in LinkedIn

CONTROL OF INANIMATE MATTER. "While living cells are often said (a little simplistically) to be dancing to the evolutionarily shaped program coded in their genomes, technologies demand that we bring matter under our own direct control. It’s one thing to design molecules that assemble themselves, quite another to design systems made from components that will reconfigure or disassemble at the push of a button." https://lnkd.in/dDwjZMg View in LinkedIn