When I picked up my copy of this week’s Chemical & Engineering News this evening, I found that the lead article begins with this:
Futuristic visions of nanobots that travel the body to treat disease and construct compounds one atom at a time got a little closer to reality this week, thanks to two advances in nanoscale robotics reported in Nature (2010, 465, 202 and 206). Using DNA as the key construction material, one group of researchers created a nanoscale robot that can autonomously walk across a track, and a different group prepared a nanofactory in which DNA robots can carry and deposit nanoparticle cargo.
The article closes with this:
“A goal of our field is to refashion and reimagine all the complex biochemical machinery of cells to suit our own purposes—to have synthetic molecules that can move around and carry cargo as protein motors do in cells, to have molecules that act as chemical factories, which make a particular product based on a particular chemical input, and above all to make these processes modular, to make them engineerable,” notes Paul W. K. Rothemund, the Caltech scientist who invented DNA origami. “These two papers mark a significant advance along this research direction.”
This is great — I can quote C&EN instead of writing my own report of the news, and by the same stroke, this makes the C&EN report part of that news.
As a bonus, the wording of the C&EN report gives me an opportunity to remind readers that the idea of constructing things “one atom at a time” is based on a misconception, serving as a common but dangerous shorthand for “atomically precise fabrication”. The mistaken idea that these are equivalent has caused endless difficulties, because chemists recognize that juggling individual atoms makes no chemical sense.
To hammer the point again: Organic synthesis is already atomically precise, and works quite well without juggling individual atoms. The same holds for prospective methods of advanced mechanosynthesis.
And yes, what we see in Nature is a step in this direction.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Keep hammering. Seriously. The public needs this fast and now.
Monitoring and Benchmarking Nanotechnology Developments:
http://www.oecd.org/document/17/0,3343,en_21571361_41212117_42324625_1_1_1_1,00.html
umm, Hurray! ?
Dr. Drexler:
Great to hear advancements towards atomic precise fabrication,
I would like to ask a question (if that’s alrght):
Q: In proposed ‘nanofactory’ concepts, where mechanical conveyor belts, positioners etc transport and allow reactants to react, how are reliable, site-specific reactions possible, in other words what mechanism makes sure the reaction actually takes place with excellent dependability (will placing two molecules together with the right orientation do the job?). I’ve read some where it’s not positional difference in reactivity…it that right?
Thanks
Thomas
Yes.