Term of the Moment
GDDR
Definition: Fantastic Voyage
The 1966 science fiction movie directed by Richard Fleischer, starring Stephen Boyd and Raquel Welch. A submarine and crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of a patient to save him by removing a blood clot in his brain. The venture takes a turn for the worse, and the crew is in jeopardy because they only have one hour before they automatically return to normal size.
Fixing One Cell at a Time
In a somewhat similar concept, Rutgers University scientists believe nano-sized robots injected into the bloodstream can administer a drug to an infected cell in the future. With a carbon nanotube body and a biomolecular motor, its peptide limbs orient its position. Composed of DNA and proteins, the robot is easily removed from the body. (Image courtesy of the Bio-Nano Robotics team at Rutgers University: Constantinos Mavroidis, Martin L. Yarmush, Atul Dubey, Angela Thornton, Kevin Nikitczuk, Silvina Tomassone, Fotios Papadimitrakopoulos and Bernie Yurke.)