Measuring happiness with nanotechnology?

Yoshinobu Baba, a professor of chemistry at NagoyaUniversity and a director for nanobiotechnology research at the NationalInstitute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan, tells CeliaClarke over at Chemical Biology how nanotechnologycould measure our health and happiness. Why did you choose to work inchemical biology? I was an enthusiastic chemist who becameinterested in biology. Even during my PhD in inorganic analytical chemistry, Istarted working in biological areas. After this, I became involved in genomicresearch based on analytical technologies. I was doing capillaryelectrophoresis for the separation of DNA molecules. Also, I was interested inand became involved in the genomic project in Japan. What is the focus of your current research? Ourwork is mainly in nanotechnology or nanoscience. We develop new nanomaterialsand nanostructures using semiconductor, nanofabrication and chemicaltechnologies. We aim to make new structures with bio- and medical applications.To achieve this we must select the appropriate nanostructures for DNA, proteinor cell analysis. For several years we have been applying nanotechnology todisease diagnosis, especially the detection of biomarkers, SNP [singlenucleotide polymorphism] analysis and DNA sequencing. Now, we work with medicalgroups to develop very-early-stage cancer detection based on single cell orbiomolecule analysis. Also, I am collaborating with systems biologists whowould like to analyse expression profiles of genes from yeast. For this we needto develop chip structures for analysing 6000 genes in a single run, inparallel. At the moment, the scale of analysis of genetic materials is stillsmall - even a 1000 samples is large for the field. Yet humans have 20 000genes and maybe 100 000 proteins. We have so many challenges. Why is nanotechnology important for biology? In situ, in vivo real time single moleculeanalysis is an important goal. The very small number of expressed proteins canbe a key issue for cancer and other diseases. To look at interactions betweensmall numbers of molecules, very small volumes are necessary but conventionaltechnologies use large volumes. Using large volumes it is easy to detect singlemolecules, for example single molecule DNA or single molecule proteins. But ifwe want to detect interactions between proteins, proteins and DNA or moleculesand cells, we need to make very small volumes or very small structures becausebiological reactions occur at micro- to nanomolar concentrations. Chiptechnology means we can use very small volumes, making nanotechnology key forthis kind of work. How far are we away frompersonalised and predictive medicine? Personalized medicine hasa wide variety of goals. For example, we can already use the detection of SNPsto predict side reactions of drugs. But SNPs are only a small part ofpersonalised medicine. The real personalised medicine will take 10-20 years toreach. At present, we have no systems biology. We need an expression profile ofall genes and all expressed proteins, all modifications of proteins and allother reactions in the cell. We need many technologies to do that. You are a member of the steering committee formicroTAS. What are the aims of microTAS? MicroTAS isinterdisciplinary so we encourage interaction between different disciplines,including the semiconductor, electronics, chemistry, biology, medicine andelectrophysics fields. We organise microTAS meetings to bring togetherdifferent people to meet the same research target. We think the microchip iskey for targeting the biological or medical fields so we encourage microTASresearchers towards these goals. Also, the technology is branching out and isapplicable to synthesis, environmental and food analysis, to name a few.Computer chips are now in all electronic devices, including cars. Hopefully,microTAS will be such a basic kind of technology. Recently electronics andpharmaceutical companies have been involved in microTAS meetings. We'd like toexpand to include people in industrial fields including the car and metalindustries. What's the next step for nanobiotechnology? Nanobiotechnologycould be used as a measure of happiness, stress levels and health. We canmeasure the stages of cancer or diabetes, since genomic research tells us whichgenes are related to which diseases. But we need to analyse proteomics andglycomics in more detail. The next stage is to measure the function of thebrain, looking at happiness and stress. The aging population is increasing. Tenyears from now 25% of the Japanese population will be over 65. So we need tomake older people feel happier. The control of disease means happiness for somepeople and we can develop measurements of health and control the disease. Butwe have no technology to measure the happiness. And the definition of happinessis different for each of us so we need a personalised happiness measurement.That is an important target.