BioNanoTech III

Bionanotechnology III: from biomolecular assembly to applications

Structures and processes with a characteristic length scale of between 1 and 100nm play a major role in the behaviour of biological systems, lying in size as they do between small molecules and cells. Until relatively recently tools to investigate and manipulate biological systems on these length scales were quite sparse, however over the past decade developments in the physical sciences and engineering have given us a range of materials and instruments that are well suited to this probing biology at the nanoscale, including single molecule manipulations.

These tools encompass nanoscale mechanical, electronic and photonic based instrumentation as well as materials whose unique optical and magnetic properties are determined by their size. The former offer new measurement approaches whilst the latter can be used as probes that complement the molecular ones already familiar to and widely used in biological research. At the same time conceptual insights from biology, particularly with respect to exploiting individually weak but cooperative interactions, have informed the nanoscale engineering of soft materials, and especially molecular assemblies.

These two complementary aspects of bionanotechnology are now leading to advances in medicine across a broad front of diagnostics, drug and gene delivery and cell therapy, where we are seeing a convergence of basic biological research, nanoscale engineering and clinical application.

This meeting, the third in the series, brings together an international set of speakers who will discuss a broad range of topics in bionanotechnology from different perspectives and with different technical approaches.

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