Ok. Je viens de parcourir quelques articles de Angela M Belcher du MIT à l'origine de tout ça.
Je n'y ai pas compris grand chose car même s'il y a des virus, c'est plus de la "nanotechnology" que de la biologie.
Mais en gros, même si tu étais un peu trop optimiste sur les batteries solaires (qui ne sont pas citées dans l'article, mais dans une interview donnée au sujet de cet article), oui, ils commencent à faire joujou avec ces virus, à les organiser, les assembler, les lier à différents types de matériaux, y compris organiques etc...
Donc, le potentiel est assez incroyable
Ci-dessous l'abstract de l'article scientifique derrière cela :
Nano Lett., 8 (4), 1081–1089, 2008. 10.1021/nl073079f
Solvent-Assisted Patterning of Polyelectrolyte Multilayers and Selective Deposition of Virus Assemblies
Pil J. Yoo,† Ki Tae Nam,‡§ Angela M. Belcher,‡§∥ and Paula T. Hammond*§⊥
Department of Chemical Engineering and SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology (SAINT), Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, Republic of Korea, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Biological Engineering Division, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
We introduce a simple method to pattern electrostatic assemblies of viruses onto a polyelectrolyte multilayer. The increased mobility of weak polycation chains in the multilayer above a given thickness ensures the surface mobility of viruses required for spontaneous ordering of densely packed viruses atop polymeric patterns. To pattern the polyelectrolyte multilayer film, we employ a nonconventional patterning method known as solvent-assisted capillary molding for the first time on multilayer films, and demonstrate micrometer-scaled dense patterns of viruses, where the accessible feature size can be correlated by the length scale of virus and swelling property of underlying patterned polyelectrolyte multilayer. We further examine the ability to modify the top surfaces of these assemblies with biological ligands, which extends the applicability of patterned viruses to biological detection purposes. We expect that the present method described here can be generally applied to the patterning of other polyelectrolyte multilayers and combined with the ordered assembly of anisotropic nanomaterials such as polymeric nanotubes or inorganic nanowires for a broad range of applications.
P.S : pour rappel, 12 livres=5,5 kilogrammes.