EAGER: Sensing of Nanoscale Features by the Living Cells

众所周知，生物材料和系统可以在从单个细胞到组织、生物体和动物群体的广泛水平上执行传感和驱动功能。了解自然界中这些功能的机制将使我们能够建立极其强大和通用的工程系统。这项EAGER研究计划旨在了解这种控制活细胞和碳纳米管（CNTs）之间相互作用的传感机制。活细胞是否以及如何通过使用最近发现的碳纳米线圈（cnc）在纳米尺度上感知并响应几何特征将被研究。这项拟议的研究是与国立台湾大学张硕杭教授合作进行的。这是研究生物传感和驱动机制的新途径，是开发新型纳米材料和传感策略的第一步。预计在纳米尺度上定制材料特性的机会将会出现，并且在生物和健康或环境相关领域的应用，如组织工程，将成为可能。

It is well known that biological materials and systems can perform sensing and actuation functions in a wide range of levels from individual cells to tissues, organisms, and groups of animals. Understanding the mechanisms of such functions in the natural world will enable us to build extremely powerful and versatile engineered systems. This EAGER research proposal aims to understand such sensing mechanisms that govern the interactions between living cells and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Whether and how living cells could sense and thus respond to the geometrical features at the nanoscale by using a recently discover carbon nanocoils (CNCs) will be examines. The proposed research is a collaborative component with Professor Shuo Hang Chang at National Taiwan University. It is a novel approach to study the biosensing and actuation mechanisms which represents the first step to enable the development of new nano-materials and sensing strategies. It is anticipated that opportunities to tailor material properties at the nanoscale will emerge and applications in bio- and health- or environmentally related areas such as tisue engineering will become possible.