Resumen
The consequences of "broadcasting" drugs to the whole body are profound. Drugs that attack rogue, cancer-causing cells also afflict other dividing cells, such as those in the intestine. Researchers have long dreamed of "magic bullets" that go directly where they are needed. Indeed, many current drugs are formulated to be taken up by particular tissues, and nanotechnology is giving researchers even more delivery options. In 2004, Ehud Shapiro, a computer scientist and biological chemist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues created a test-tube "molecular computer" consisting of three interconnected modules. They demonstrated the whole process, beginning to end, Shapiro notes, but in a test tube. To both sense specific strands of messenger RNA and to perform the computation, the Weizmann researchers exploited the sequence-specific matching of DNA strands. Augmenting, rather than replacing, the diagnostic strengths of the medical community could be an important early application of micromedicine, and relaxes the demands for on-board computation and drug delivery.