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Human Cells Eat Nanowires

Drop silicon nanowires and human cells into the same petri dish, and you’ll see something extraordinary: The cells will eat the nanowires. Researchers at the University of Chicago recorded the phenomenon, and reported it Friday in the journal Science Advances. The group aims to harness that knowledge to develop a new means of drug delivery or bioelectronic therapy. ‘We want to do something that is special,’ says Bozhi Tian, a materials scientist at the University of Chicago. “We’re trying to develop a bioelectronic device that is intracellular” and can control individual parts of the cell, he says.”

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