Snomipede races to solve the mysteries of life

A multi-disciplinary team of scientists from the UK Universities of Sheffield, Nottingham, Manchester and Glasgow has been awarded a £3m research grant to develop a new nanotechnology tool called the Snomipede.

The team, led by Professor Graham Leggett at the University of Sheffield, hopes that once developed, the Snomipede - whose name was coined to reflect the fusion of 'millipede' technology with scanning near-field optical microscopy - could enable advances in areas as diverse as the understanding of the origins of disease and the low-cost commercial manufacture of plastic computer chips.

The Snomipede will enable scientists to create tiny molecular structures on scales as small as 13 nanometres, and once developed will have a multitude of uses in both medical research and commercial manufacturing. In the field of medical research, the ability to construct tiny arrays of biological molecules will enable scientists to conduct extremely sensitive analysis of biological samples, and could be used to understand how the human genome regulates the production of proteins, perhaps holding the key to developing new treatments for common diseases.

Professor Leggett said: 'This research grant will allow the team to pioneer faster, smaller and more efficient methods of manipulating and building molecular structures. The development of Snomipede technology represents the coming together of nanotechnology, molecular and cell biology, microsystems engineering and synthetic and surface chemistry.

'We anticipate that our research will have implications throughout the world of medical research, with the potential to be applied in the fields of tissue engineering and protein research.'