Tim McKnight of ORNLs Engineering Science and Technology Division and researchers from several other laboratory divisions and the University of Tennessee are working to advance the science of micro-injection. The work builds upon the groups success with fabricating carbon nanofibers, which are tiny needles that provide a new approach to genetic manipulation of cells and biological organisms.
By using an array of millions of carbon nanofibers that can be grown on various platforms -- or substrates -- we can streamline a proven technique for altering the DNA content of a cell, McKnight said.
That proven technique, micro-injection, involves introducing genetic material, DNA, directly into a cells nucleus. This allows researchers to genetically alter the attributes of a cell and to exploit the cell to perform desired functions such as to produce a pharmaceutically active compound to grow under adverse conditions or to detect environmental hazards.
The groups technique, which has grown from a project funded by ORNL seed money in the spring of 2002, allows for highly controlled rapid delivery of genetic material into large numbers of cells.
While we have focused predominantly on mammalian cells, the parallel micro-injection-based technique should be quite transferable to a wide variety of cell types, including those with rugged cell walls such as plants and bacteria, McKnight said.
Of particular interest is the fact that the new method allows researchers to attach DNA to the nanofibers. When they insert these nanofibers into cells, the DNA can be used to program the cell to produce new proteins, but it is not free to move around within the c
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Contact: Ron Walli
wallira@ornl.gov
865-576-0226
DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
19-May-2003