Micro technology is already making a major impact in the area of biological analysis and discovery. The basic science behind identifying the presence of a particular gene or protein has been developing for some time and is not considered nanotechnology per se, but MEMS and micro fluidics developments, such as the lab on a chip, are now offering a degree of parallelism that hasn't been seen before, the ability to detect much smaller quantities of a substance, equipment that can be taken out of the lab and carried around, increased automation by virtue of the integration of micro circuitry into the devices, and the benefits of the mass production approaches used in the semiconductor industry.
These benefits are typified by an approach to bioanalysis that takes a micro array (a standard tool for parallel biodetection using luminescence), shrinks it greatly, and then uses atomic force microscope tips to measure whether a substance has been detected. Such devices are in development now and expand the number of substances that can be easily used in array technologies because such small amounts are needed—detection using micro arrays often requires an amplification step whereby the substance to be detected is multiplied in quantity first, something that cannot be done with everything.
