Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
half the diameter of DNA up to 1/20 the size of a red blood cell. This size range
is comparable to that of viruses and is one-fourth the wavelength of visible light.
The beginning of nanoscience was mainly devoted to the study and fabrication of
materials at the nanoscale, where much effort was dedicated to shrink the dimen-
sion of fabricated materials. It was the same time when the two basic fabrication
approaches were defined: “bottom-up” and “top-down.” The bottom-up approach
aims at building things by combining smallest possible building materials such as
single molecules and atoms, which are held together by covalent forces. The advan-
tage of the bottom-up design is that the covalent bonds that hold a single molecule
together, are far stronger than the weak interactions that hold more than one mol-
ecule together. A top-down approach (also known as step-wise design) is essentially
the moulding, carving, and fabricating of small materials and components by using
bigger objects such as mechanical tools and lasers. Recently, application of nano-
materials prepared using techniques involving both the approaches have evolved.
However, the bottom-up approach has far more practical and future applications.
Thus, nanotechnology is a multi-disciplinary field that seeks to combine mature
nanoscale technology of fields such as physics, biology, engineering, chemistry,
computer science, and material science. Potential applications include agricultural
production (plant and animal), food processing, and manufacturing in areas such as
pathogen detection, food engineering, packaging, and equipment (Perez-de-Luque
et al.
2009
; Torney et al.
2007
).
1.2 The “Nano-Bio” Interface
For last many years, nanoscale processes and structures have been optimized in
order to govern the biosystems. Biologists have been working for several years at
the molecular level, in the range of nanometers (DNA and proteins) to micrometers
(cells). A typical protein such as hemoglobin has a diameter of about 5 nm, DNA's
double helix is about 2 nm wide, and a mitochondrion spans a few hundred nanome-
ters (Whitesides et al.
2003
). Consequently, the study of any subcellular entity can
be considered “nanobiology”. Moreover, today, a living cell having its hundreds of
nanomachines is considered to be the essential nanoscale fabrication system. Nano-
sized molecular building blocks have been the basis of each and every biological
system that cooperates to produce living entities. These elements have enlightened
the imagination of nanotechnologists for many years, resulting in the birth of the
new science “Nanobiotechnology: The combination of nano and biotechnology”.
Nanotechnology provides the tools and technology platforms for the investiga-
tion and transformation of biological systems, whereas biology offers inspirational
models and bio-assembled components to nanotechnology (Fortina et al.
2005
;
Lowe et al.
2000
; Bohr et al.
2002
). The difference between “nanobiology” and
“nanobiotechnology” exists in the technology part as anything that is “man-made”
falls into the technology section of nanobiotechnology. Nanobiotechnology will
lead to the design of entirely newclasses of micro- and nanofabricated devices and
machines, for which the inspiration will be based on bio-structured machines.
