Bio-Magnetic Interfacing Concepts

The Bio-Magnetic Interfacing Concepts (BioMagnetICs) Program explores and demonstrates the utility of nanoscale magnetics as a portable, robust, and highly sensitive transduction mechanism for monitoring and controlling biological activity at the cellular and, ultimately, single molecule level. Living cells and tissues exhibit an extraordinary range of functionalities including highly selective biochemical sensing (even in chemically noisy environments), protein synthesis, information processing, and color change. Recent developments in biotechnology offer the promise of exploiting these functionalities for sensing, diagnostic, therapeutic, and other DoD and commercial applications. However, exploitation of these functionalities in devices that can be taken out of a laboratory environment will require the development of biochemical signal transduction mechanisms that are robust, portable, and highly reliable in noisy environments. A transduction mechanism based on a bio-magnetic interface would meet these requirements and offers solutions to outstanding technical issues that continue to keep many innovative developments in biotechnology from being fielded for DoD use.