Team Venus: the past three meetings

This entry will encompass the past three team meetings and the important decisions made during each one. During the first meeting, we decided to toss out the idea of our sensor being close to an existing, working channel by using an acetylcholine molecule. It was just too complicated to work, and we thought it would be easier to simply let the sensor bind anywhere on the motor endplate. Several new problems arose from this, however. We were worried that since the tubes would not necessarily be next to a working channel, the voltage difference across the membrane would not be strong enough to make our tubes gate open. We were also worried that the voltage change caused by the existing channels closing would not outweigh the voltage created by our still open tubes, and thus our tubes would never close because the voltage change the electrodes would sense would not be enough. We solved both these problems by saying we would have sensitive electrodes and a loop system in our nanocomputer that would constantly take readings of the voltage difference and gate the tubes accordingly. Then we began to wonder if it was feasible to assume that future nanochips would be able to do a loop program and store data. Our worries were put to rest when Dr. Wasser told us that we can assume future nanochips will have those capabilities and that the strength of the membrane potential does not depend on the distance from a working channel.
Also in this meeting, we came up with an idea of how to penetrate the inner membrane wall. The mycelle would get our device most of the way in the membrane, and then two claw-like legs would open up and let out sailic acid and neuroamenities that would eat through the membrane, allowing our tube to span the membrane. The claw-like legs would also provide stability and keep the tube upright. Later on we discovered that the sailic acid and neuroamenities really don’t break through membranes like we thought they did.
In the next meeting, we decided to put a computer sensing station and electrodes on each tube to make our device simpler. We also decided our tubes would have a tubular body that would fan out into a funnel shape on the outside of the cell. “The Box” consisting of the nanochip, motor, gears, etc. would be located on the funnel part of the tube. One electrode would be on the tube inside the cell and the other electrode would be on the funnel part of the tube outside the cell. These will be connected to “The Box” by nanowires embedded in the tube. The gate for our tube would be a flat, circular lid connected to a cylinder on top of “The Box”, so gears inside the box can turn the cylinder and rotate the lid laterally.
In the last meeting, we found a very cool way to both gate our device and to make it penetrate the inner membrane wall. This process involves creating an electric current that opens up pores in a phospholipid layer to allow things like ions or DNA to pass through. Once the current is stopped, the pores reseal. We are really considering using this process for both gating and penetrating, but we were going to look into it further. Also, we made an outline of the outline for our presentation, and we assigned each person a topic to write notes about. Then one person can take everybody’s notes and write the outline so it won’t be in different writing styles.