Self-Assembling Nanodevices in Jabs - Is It Even Possible?

Popular science for the Covid age.

Continued from “Jabs, Autonotoms, and Magnetoelectric Nanotransducers“

A vast majority of us finds it impossible to believe that self-assembling nanodevices could be feasible, let alone real, and, on top, injected into you for practical nefarious purposes. The discussion in the comments to “Jabs, Autonotoms, and Magnetoelectric Nanotransducers“ is a testimony to that. I can count myself in this camp as well. All I did in my previous post, though, was to follow the banal logic in putting together the clues, and ended up with a totally wild explanation that neatly incorporates all the clues. Therefore, let us research whether such a thing is at all a possibility, and how remote or immediate it might be. Let’s dig in!

First, let’s understand what is meant by “self-assembly” in terms of nano(bio)technology. This is the opposite of the top-down approach of building things by putting them together, consciously, according to some plan. One obvious example - snowflakes. They self-assemble into those wonderful complex stars simply by the water molecules attracting each other in a certain way. Similarly, nano-materials may self-assemble from the constituent materials under certain conditions and through carefully controlled chemical and physical processes. For example, read this: “Integrative Self-assembly of Graphene Quantum Dot and Biopolymer into a Versatile Biosensing Toolkit” (2015.06.01): ”Hybrid self-assembly has become a reliable approach to synthesize soft materials with multiple levels of structural complexity and synergistic functionality. In this work, photoluminescent graphene quantum dots (GQDs, 2–5 nm) are used for the first time as molecule-like building blocks to construct self-assembled hybrid materials for label-free biosensors. Ionic self-assembly of disc-shaped GQDs and charged biopolymers is found to generate a series of hierarchical structures that exhibit aggregation-induced fluorescence quenching of the GQDs and change the protein/polypeptide secondary structure.”

This is all fine and dandy, but doesn’t give us any clues how the nano-scale electronic devices could be “self-assembled”. DNA to the rescue! “The Art of Designing DNA Nanostructures with CAD Software“ (2021):

Principal formation of a DNA origami. (a) The scaffold strand functions as a backbone and is clamped together by a set of staple strands. (b) Representation of a small rectangle. (c) Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) image of a typical structure of dimensions 100 × 70 nm (scale bar: 50 nm). Picture adapted from Smith et al.

“The DNA origami technique was first introduced by Paul Rothemund in 2006 [12], and it is largely responsible for the rapid expansion of the DNA nanotechnology field from a mostly niche area of research to its current status as an integral tool for a broad number of areas. At their root, all of these specific design implementations share a common underlying strategy: a long, single-stranded, so-called “scaffold strand”, which typically consists of several thousand bases of a known sequence, is folded and stably clamped into a specific shape by a collection of several hundred shorter “staple” oligonucleotides (the picture above).” “Convenience has typically limited the maximum size of DNA origami structures, since the most commonly-used scaffold strand is derived from the genome of the M13 bacteriophage, which is around 7000 bases in length. These discrete size limits that are imposed by this choice of scaffold (typically several hundred nanometers for a thin rod or approximately one hundred nanometers for a more rigid block) have been increasingly circumvented by using, or genetically modifying, longer scaffold strands [32,33], or alternatively binding together multiple structures into a large aggregate structures“.

What can be built with this DNA origami?

Example of scaffold routing and strain relaxation with vHelix software. (a) Using virtually any shape as input, a three-dimensional mesh can be generated based on a scaffold routing through individual vertices. (b,c) To eliminate odd vertex numbers double edges are introduced. (d,e) The A-trails algorithm routes the scaffold (blue) through the structure and staple-strand (multi-coloured) are included. (f–i) Before the final output (j) a routine is applied to minimize the remaining internal stress.

This is not purely theoretical - such structures can and are easily created with commercially available materials - “Self-Assembly of Large DNA Origami with Custom-Designed Scaffolds”(2018):

Cross-sectional profile of the 10,782-nt scaffolded triangular DNA origami measured along the thin white line in the image: the width is ~140 nm

OK, impressive, but what about nanoelectronics? Graphene quantum dots and DNA to the rescue! “Directed Self-Assembly: Expectations and Achievements.” (2010)

(a) Illustration of the strategy to prepare ‘satellite’-shaped assemblies. (b, c) A nanoparticle satellite structure obtained from the reaction involving 9:1 S1-modified 10 nm particles/S2-modified 30 nm particle

“Directed self-assembly technique can be used appropriately to produce functional nanostructures, for example nanowires and an organized array of nano-dots [quantum dots] …The use of physical DNA templates, results in the growth of nanomaterials in a predefined position, eliminating the need for post-growth manipulation and providing the ease of electrical connections for additional characterizations“.

And what can be built with quantum dots? Well, electrical circuitry! “DNA-based nanowires and nanodevices“ (2016).

“Nanopatterned graphene quantum dots as building blocks for quantum cellular automata”(2011): “Quantum cellular automata (QCA) is an innovative approach that incorporates quantum entities in classical computation processes. Binary information is encoded in different charge states of the QCA cells and transmitted by the inter-cell Coulomb interaction. Despite the promise of QCA, however, it remains a challenge to identify suitable building blocks for the construction of QCA. Graphene has recently attracted considerable attention owing to its remarkable electronic properties. The planar structure makes it feasible to pattern the whole device architecture in one sheet, compatible with the existing electronics technology. Here, we demonstrate theoretically a new QCA architecture built upon nanopatterned graphene quantum dots (GQDs). …Our results show great potential in manufacturing high-density ultrafast QCA devices from a single nanopatterned graphene sheet.“

QCAs can form various types of circuits, for example logic gates, cable crossovers, inverters or cables. (Sardinha, LH; Costa, AM; Neto, OPV; Vieira, LF; Vieira, MA 2013)

“Electron-Beam Lithography and Molecular Liftoff for Directed Attachment of DNA Nanostructures on Silicon: Top-down Meets Bottom-up”(2014): “But how could the QCA cells be patterned to form the complex arrays needed for computationally interesting circuitry, and how could those arrays of molecular circuitry be integrated with conventional electronic inputs and outputs? Top-down methods lacked the spatial resolution and high level of parallelism needed to make molecular circuits. Bottom-up chemical synthesis lacked the ability to fabricate arbitrary and heterogeneous structures tens to hundreds of nanometers in size. Chemical self-assembly at the time could produce structures in the right size scale, but was limited to homogeneous arrays. A potential solution to this conundrum was just being demonstrated in the late 1990s and early 2000s: DNA nanostructures self-assembled from oligonucleotides,whose high information density could handle the creation of arbitrary structures and chemical inhomogeneity. Our group became interested in whether DNA nanostructures could function as self-assembling circuit boards for electrical or magnetic QCA systems. This Account focuses on what we learned about the interactions of DNA nanostructures with silicon substrates and, particularly, on how electron-beam lithography could be used to direct the binding of DNA nanostructures on a variety of functional substrates.“

For much more on what has been said above, read ”Identification of Patterns in Coronavirus Vaccines: Evidence of DNA-Origami Self-Assembly”.

So far so good, but how would such nanodevices be able to communicate between themselves, inside a human body, or the external macro-devices, considering their communication range being expressed in millimeters, at most? Plasmonic nanoantennas, for one: “Graphene Bow-tie Nanoantenna for Wireless Communications in the Terahertz Band“(2014):”The interconnection of nanoscale devices (i.e., nanonodes) within a nanonetwork with existing communication networks, as well as the Internet, defines a new networking paradigm, namely the Internet of Nano-Things. Within this context, the definition of a nanonode requires specific features, especially for what concerns novel nanomaterial and components. Graphene-enabled wireless communications is emerging as a novel paradigm, which has been proposed to implement wireless communications among nanosystems. Indeed, graphene-based plasmonic nanoantennas, namely graphennas, are just a few micrometers in size, and are accordingly tuned to radiate electromagnetic waves in the terahertz band.”

Second technology for the microantennas is using the graphene fractal crystals: “Enhanced Graphene Photodetector with Fractal Metasurface“(2017): “…being a single atomic layer thick, graphene has intrinsically small optical absorption, which hinders its incorporation with modern photodetecting systems. In this work, we propose a gold snowflake-like fractal metasurface design to realize broadband and polarization-insensitive plasmonic enhancement in graphene photodetector.“

Construction of the fractal with the shape of a snowflake structured in four levels and the uniform distribution of the electric field in the quadrant (c). The excitation wavelength of the graphene plasmon is 530 nm.

So, where does this all leave us? What would it have to do with jabs, mind control and autonotoms? These are but possible components of the Internet of Nano Things inside a human body, as expounded in “Identification of Patterns in Coronavirus Vaccines: Evidence of DNA-Origami Self-Assembly“.

As a wild Sci-Fi speculation, here’s how this might work (I am not saying that it does):

• A large number of nanonodes and electromagnetic transducers are injected into the bloodstream and dispersed throughout the body, including the brain;

• A smaller quantity of nanorouters is also injected and dispersed, the signals from the nanodevices collected by nanorouters and routed to a location close to the human body surface, possibly to the injection site;

• the injection site acts as a fractal antenna (why the magnetism?) for the egress data communication, and also for the ingress command flow.

This is different from the Battelle DARPA grant, but, as “the back of the napkin” design, has its merits and advantages. If such a network can be configured. Which leads us back to the Patent WO2020060606 - wasn’t it about the configuration step?

At the very least, there is enough technology to go around, if one had an unlimited budget and keen interest.