June 9, 2011 Electrical engineers have long been toying with the
idea of designing biological molecules that can be directly
integrated into electronic circuits. University of Pennsylvania
researchers have developed a way to form these structures so
they can operate in open-air environments, and, more important,
have developed a new microscope technique that can measure the
electrical properties of these and similar devices. The research
was conducted by Dawn Bonnell, Trustee Chair Professor and
director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center, graduate students
Kendra Kathan-Galipeau and Maxim Nikiforov and postdoctoral
fellow Sanjini Nanayakkara, all of the Department of Materials
Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and
Applied Science. They collaborated with assistant professor
Bohdana Discher of the Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry
at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and Paul A. O'Brien, a
graduate student in Penn's Biotechnology Masters Program. Their
work was published in the jou