Canadian Media admits to nanotechnology Risks

A 60-carbon-atom, soccer-ball-shaped buckyball is more attracted to
double strand DNA than to other buckyballs.

Buckyballs, among the most used and certainly the most celebrated of
manmade nanoparticles, might represent a potent health threat.

According to computer simulations the 60-carbon-atom, soccer-ball-shaped
molecule can damage or even destroy DNA.

Researchers have suggested that buckyballs, whose technical name is
"fullerenes," might be used in chemical sensors and hydrogen fuel cells.
And some researchers are testing biomedical applications in which
buckyballs would encapsulate especially toxic drugs or radioactive
materials.

Scientists already realized buckyballs could be
toxic. Studies at Duke University in 2004 showed that when buckyballs
were introduced to laboratory aquariums they damaged the brains of
largemouth bass and may also have prevented certain water-borne bacteria
from reproducing.

Until then scientists had theorized that the strong attraction that
buckyballs have for each other would cause the molecules to clump
together and safely sink to the bottom of any body of water, be it a
test aquarium or a lake.

As it turns out, says Peter Cummings, a professor of chemical
engineering at Vanderbilt University and director of the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory's Nanomaterials Theory Institute, in water the
attraction between a buckyball molecule and a DNA molecule is several times stronger than the attraction between two buckyballs.

"We found, somewhat surprisingly, that these buckyballs bond quite
strongly to both double-stranded and single-stranded DNA," said
Cummings, whose group designed the simulation. "They bond strongly
enough that they distort the structure of the DNA."

The buckyballs break apart vital hydrogen bonds within the DNA
molecule's double helix and they can stick to grooves on DNA's surface,
causing the molecule to bend. Not only do the buckyballs damage the DNA,
Cummings says, they cripple its ability to heal.

"The buckyballs insert themselves in a way that prevents the DNA from
self-repairing," Cummings told LiveScience. The buckyball actually
forces a piece of nucleotide from one of the DNA's double helixes and
takes its place, preventing the strands from reuniting.

Cummings cautions that this simulation work didn't test whether
buckyballs can breach the cell walls that house DNA molecules. That
would require another simulation project and, eventually, laboratory
tests on living organisms. And, he notes, these results don't mean that
all nano-scale building blocks pose such threats.

www.livescience.com

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/indepth/innovation/s/capress/090109/health/health_na...
http://www.thecanadianpress.com/
http://www.consumerscouncil.com/site/Consumers_Council_of_Canada_69/pdf/NANO%...

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[bugsz1]

More good news.

[xlla]

@bugsz1

Why has this been Flagged as spam????

[bugsz1]

@xlla I have no idea.