Tattoos of graphene in the teeth for the encouragement if we are sick

The teeth of the people have to say much about each. And the breath, more. And now these messages can reach wirelessly or without a word.

It is known that in the future food packages carry sensors embedded in its labeldetected by a color change, if you have pochos during storage. Why not apply these same sensors to see if we are bad we are consumers?

That's the idea behind Mike McAlpine, a research engineer at the University ofPrinceton (USA) has developed a new type of sensor is made ​​of graphene as adental tattoo and is able to determine when suffering an illness bacteriological, and even determine the type of pathology that makes us sick because the bacteria present in the breath.

Only very few bacteria are needed to put a sick person, so early detection ofthese small bacterial concentrations before they escalate add great potential for success in their treatment.

Graphene is a layer of carbon one atom thick, making it an element sticky and sensitive enough for this mission. By implementing carefully constructed peptides(short amino acid sequence) on the graphene surface, McAlpine and his group have shown that the sensors can detect the bacteria individually, collecting themlike Velcro. They can even detect bacteria at single cell level.

Graphene sensors are on a silk film and implanted on the tooth surface like aradio frequency tag, so that allows wireless communication with a detector. Thissilk film, being made ​​of proteins, vanishes with saliva leaving the graphenesensor attached to the tooth, like a super-resistant indelible sticker (s graphene, friends), while remaining strongly attached to the surface through the Van der Waals forces.

This is the first time a device is connected directly with biological tissue and thePrinceton group has already shown that the sensors could also be made of thin sheets of gold foil supported by a silk film digestible, but still have a long way to go to achieve "gold teeth" that we detect evil.

For now McAlpine and his team are planning to license and commercializegraphene sensors in its current form, but are too large to be practical (used acow's tooth development).

The next step is to reduce their size so they can actually fit a human tooth, but several experts in biochemistry have announced that they are impressed with theresearch and design that blends wireless controller, format flexibility and speed, resulting in a strategy they regard as "brilliant." As a gold tooth without going any further.