New nanotechnology is announced

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- U.S. nanoscientists say they have developed a technology that can be used to examine single molecules in order to determine gene expression.

Previously, researchers have only been able to determine gene expression using microarray technology or DNA sequencing. However, such processes cannot effectively measure single gene transcripts -- the building blocks of gene expression. With the new technology, researchers say they were able to isolate and identify individual transcript molecules.

"Gene expression profiling is used widely in basic biological research and drug discovery," said Jason Reed of UCLA and the study's lead author. "Scientists have been hampered in their efforts to unlock the secrets of gene transcription in individual cells by the minute amount of material that must be analyzed. Nanotechnology allows us to push down to the level of individual transcript molecules."

The technology -- developed at UCLA's California Nanosystems Institute, New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Veeco Instruments Inc. -- is detailed in the current issue of the journal Nanotechnology.