Feng Li is casting his nano-net wide.<\/p>\n
The Brock University Assistant Professor of Chemistry is laying the groundwork for a partnership with the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics at the Chinese Academy of Science.<\/p>\n
Li was there recently as a participant of the Ontario-China Young Scientist Exchange Program, a provincial government initiative aiming to develop international research and commercialization activities between Ontario and Chinese organizations.<\/p>\n
The program is affiliated with the Ontario government\u2019s Early Researcher Award<\/a>, which Li received earlier this year for his research on the use of DNA nanotechnology to detect diseases.<\/p>\n Breakthrough developments through Li\u2019s research include a microscopic robot<\/a> that has the potential to identify drug resistance to tuberculosis faster than conventional tests, a paper-based device<\/a> that can reveal the presence of illness from DNA samples, and a three-dimensional, microscopic nanomachine<\/a> that can detect diseases in a blood sample within 30 minutes.<\/p>\n Li and his team also created a tool<\/a> that can potentially be used in a future computer that will be made out of DNA. Their technique, called allosteric DNA toehold, has been integrated as a key component in one of the world\u2019s most advanced DNA neural networks by the Qian lab<\/a> at the California Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n During his three-week visit to China, Li worked in the laboratory of Professor Chunhai Fan, who has done breakthrough research in the areas of biosensing, biophotonics, and DNA nanotechnology and computation.<\/p>\n \u201cI never knew him before, but I\u2019d been reading a lot of his work, since he\u2019s a very big name in my field,\u201d says Li. \u201cWhen I heard about this exchange program, his name came to my mind. I contacted him to see whether I could have the opportunity to visit his lab for a couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n Li\u2019s initial research proposal centred on how to modify a sophisticated piece of an electrochemical sensor in Fan\u2019s lab to be able to detect proteins, which would assist Li\u2019s disease detection work.<\/p>\n