A Costa Rican Electric Engineer, Juan Scott Chavez, is doing some research  on Carbon Nanotubes and their potential to kill certain bacterias and to cure a variety of diseases. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs  also known as buckytubes) are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure. Diamond is of course the best known of all allotrope carbon! Thanks to their properties, nanotubes are useful in electronics, optics, material science, and lately in architectural fields. Because of their amazing strength and electrical properties , they are also widely used as thermal conductors.

Chavez is just back in Costa Rica and set himself up in Cartago, where he has been working as an engineer in the TEC (Costa Rican Institute of Technology), after having spent several months  in California, in Long Beach, teaching and researching in the University of California. His work there eventually led him to the Carbon Nanotubes. Carbon Nanotubes works pretty much the same way as another mineral called Graphite that is used as a lubricant and to build cars, aircraft and golf clubs!

In pretty much the same way  discoveries in the medical field were made throughout history, Chavez discovered the medical properties of the Nanotubes completely by chance, while trying to understand how he could produce them.  Making nanotubes results being a tricky affair as they get damaged in the process; a slide of atom is wrapped up in some iron sheet in order to shape them like a tube, but when the sheet is removed, the atoms are in bad condition. This was when Chavez’s brother suggested he uses iron-eating bacterias to get rid of the iron sheets, thus there would be no damaged done to the atoms.

Upon trying the theory, Chavez was pleased to observe that indeed this functioned perfectly, as the bacterias ate the atom tubes, extracting the iron sheet leaving the tubes of atom completely clean. However that was not all!  Following this feast came no excretion, instead, they started to develop some kind of  bacterial flagellum with a peculiar tail with which they propelled themselves forward in an organism. Then came the bigger surprise when  it was observed that the bacteria started to divide themselves, or in other words,they started to reproduce! As he was observing the process, Chavez concluded that the nanotubes were placing themselves in such a way as to force the division, or reproduction to take place, and this is exactly what happens with antibiotics.

So far, experiments have only been carried on animals, however Chavez is hopeful that the experiments will advance further. This is an exciting discovery when the current antibiotics are today less potent against bacterias that have become immune to them.

Chavez is now hoping that  the construction for the new laboratory of Nanotechnology of the TEC will be finished by the end of this month, with an investment of over $1million. He is then planning on creating an Alliance with the scientists who are involved in doing research fon the the culture of the skin that is also taking place in the TEC, andhe is confident that his researches on nanotubes used as antibiotics will keep on advancing.

This is another success story for Costa Rica, something that is becoming a bit of a habit in this country! Lets not forget Chang, the famous Costa Rican astronaut, who is doing researches in the AID in Rohrmoser against Chagas Disease.

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Filed under: Costa Rica News, Technology on August 18th, 2010