As a science fiction fanatic, futuristic imaginations fascinate me. “Think about the recent science fictions, where the injured soldier’s wound gets quickly fixed and healed by a swarm of tiny robots called nanobots”. “What about a world where medical drugs only react with specific organs of our body without any adverse side effects? “.
 By Dr. Maheshi Buddhinee Dissanayake
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
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How far are we from making these science fictions into reality?Over centuries, researchers opened up pathways for new technological breakthroughs. Nanotechnology is a frontier in the present decade in terms of technological innovations. It paved ways to design miniature scale devices which lead to the new concept, “Internet of Nano Things (IoNT)”, where intelligent micro and nano scale devices group together to carry out a task. The Internet of NanoThings led to smaller, lighter and faster devices with greater functionality,using fewer materials and consuming lesser energy. IoNT is primarily defined through units of length; one billionth of a centimetre.
Though nanotechnology sounds exciting, there are major problems faced by the scientists. One of the main and obvious challenges would be designing these nano size devices. Another limitation would be the communication among these nano devices to orchestrate to do a task. Due to its size, traditional electromagnetic wave based communication such as radio communication, Wi-Fi,even the technique adopted in fiber optical communication fails to provide a feasible solution for communication among nano and micro devices.
Hence, nanotechnology commands the scientists to look beyond the existing communication architectures in communication engineering. So how can we commutate with miniature things? The answer was not far away. If we look around, all the biological systems, including you and me are made up of billions of tiny building blocks called ‘cells’. To function as a living being, communication between cells, tissues and organs is of paramount importance. Ifwe take a closer look, cells in a biological system communicates with each other by the means of molecules.For instance, cells communicate by releasing hormones in to the blood stream, exchanging Calcium ions through protein channels and many other ways.
This understanding gives rise to one subclass of IoNT, called Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNT), which comprises of machines built using either real orartificial biological materials and mimics the behaviour of biological cells.
The communication in IoBNT adoptsa new paradigm referred as molecular communication. What is Molecular Communication? Inspired by the inherent communication system inbiology, communication engineers have pioneered the molecular communication (MC) paradigm, which employs molecules as information carrying messengers in micro/nano scale networks, which span a short distance (tens of micrometers). Imagine that instead of transmitting data electromagnetically through wires or wireless, you could use molecules to send messages using chemicals like calcium in the human body.
This kind of achievement has tremendous practical applications for data communication in the human body such as targeted drug delivery systems.The nano transmitters and the nano receivers in MCare capable of performing the very simple tasks, such as emitting and receiving signals, computation, sensing and simple decision making. Yet, these can be viewed as the basic building blocks of a complex operation or task. Either biological or synthetic molecules carry the message through transmission medium, following similar settings as cells communicating through releasing hormones into the bloodstreams in the human body.Where can we find Applications of Molecular Communication?This emerging concept comes with huge potentials finding applications in many different domains, such as pharmacology, synthetic biology, environmental analysis, nanotechnology. For example, an electrical chip on the human body can communicate with a smart wearable device through skin using chemical molecules of sweat and odour. The MC system working with in the human body can support personalised drug delivery, by localising the treatments for radical outcomes such as cancer treatments, with autoimmunity support systems which can cater individual DNA structures.
Designs are underway to use this technology for monitoring waste control, pollution control, and other environmental impacting emissions in the manufacturing process. This application can be achieved by engineering synthetic bacteria that can performa range of signalling and communications tasks in response to environmental changes. Biologists, Scientists, Engineers and Programmers have already ventured into the novel design of Lab on a chip (LOC). In LOC, they expect to integrate several laboratory functions, such as data extraction, testing,synthesis, processing and recording at nano scale.
Due to its miniature nature with highly functional capacity, LOCs are considered for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission, as a solution for onsite chemical laboratories. Together, the Internet of Bio-Nano Things and molecular communication can do wonders through control and monitor of biological processes, and enable new unique applications, ranging from new tools to study, understand, and enhance the recovery from developmental and neurodegenerative diseases, to novel BMI sand other technologies targeted at enriching human–machine interaction. Soon these new technologies will become an inseparable part of our future.
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