Electric Avenue: They are about 50,000 times shorter than a human hair is wide, they conduct electricity, and they are made out of something called oligophenylenevinylene. They're nanowires, organic molecules synthesized by associate professor of chemistry Christopher Chidsey, PhD '84, and graduate students Stephen Dudek and Hadley Sikes in collaboration with scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. If the teeny-tiny wires prove capable of connecting to molecules in the human body, scientists might use them to create biological sensors that measure glucose levels in diabetics or hormone levels in menopausal women. Nanowires might also assist in identifying DNA from crime scenes.
What a Pest: Put the bug spray down, because it's not doing anything. Stanford researchers led by associate professor of biological sciences Deborah M. Gordon have found that household pesticides don't kill off the multi-queen colonies of Argentine ants that plague the Bay Area and several other regions around the world. Nor does it help to wipe the crumbs off the counter. The key to controlling the ant population? Mild weather, say the researchers. The insects are more likely to invade homes during winter rainstorms and summer droughts.
Antibiotic Assembly Line: Can an everyday bacterium be genetically engineered to produce new forms of a workhorse antibiotic? Yes, according to Chaitan Khosla, an associate professor of chemistry and chemical engineering. Khosla and his colleagues inserted the largest working genes to date into harmless E. coli, which cranked out a modified version of erythromycin, a common penicillin substitute. The approach is more efficient than chemical modification at creating novel antibiotics that can overcome resistant bacterial infections.
