CANCER and other diseases may one day be diagnosed by chemical sensors
implanted inside a sick person’s cells, according to researchers at the
University of Michigan.
Raoul Kopelman and his colleagues have made tiny sensors out of polymer balls
just 20 nanometres across, 10 times the width of a DNA helix. The balls,
nicknamed “pebbles”, are impregnated with a dye that glows when it binds to a
particular chemical. They take up only one-billionth of the volume of a
cell, so they can be inserted into living cells without upsetting their
biochemical machinery.
The amount of light produced by the…
