A video of my talk at the Moscow Polytechnical Museum is now on YouTube. I gave this talk on advanced nanotechnology prospects to an audience drawn from local technical universities during my recent Moscow visit.

(This is followup to my brief post from Moscow.)

Because I’m primarily known for the concept of an advanced, atomically precise nanotechnology, the enthusiastic welcome I received in Moscow at Rusnanotech 2011 indicates how the idea is received in Russia. With that in mind, here are some markers of Russian interest in the concept:

Dmitry Medvedev
speaking at Rusnanotech 2011

Remarks on nanotechnology
by the President of Russia

Rusnanotech is billed as Europe’s largest nanotechnology conference. As I mentioned in my post from Moscow, I’d been invited to give the closing speech at the opening plenary, outlining prospects for the future of nanotechnology. My remarks were followed by an unannounced speech by Dmitry Medvedev, the President of the Russian Federation. The pleasantly surprising opening of his talk suggests the impact of the concept of atomically precise manufacturing in Russia:

Good afternoon, colleagues,

It is hard to speak after Mr Drexler, who is such a legend, and I will probably have to make a few adjustments to my speech now, given what has already been said…. [Full transcript in translation here]

President Medvedev is widely known as technophile, and I’m told that he has read my first book, Engines of Creation. He paused to shake my hand on the way out.

A roadmap project led by
the Russian Academy of Sciences

As many of you know, I was the leader of the technical side of the 2007 Battelle / National Labs roadmap for productive nanosystems, which explores paths toward the development of high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing. This effort involved some 200 researchers and engineers from academia, industry, and the hosting National Labs. There’s now a Russian translation from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

At Rusnanotech, I learned more about a current international roadmap project, led by the Russian Academy of Sciences and centered on technological directions and market opportunities. During a followup meeting with a Rusnano representative visiting Oxford, I had an opportunity to review a draft overview of this remarkably systematic and detailed study.

A technical talk for a university audience

In the afternoon of the first day, I spoke to a predominantly young audience drawn from Moscow technical universities. In this talk (held at the venerable Polytechnical Museum) I discussed the physical and engineering principles of atomically precise fabrication. The audience response after the talk was warm (even uncomfortably warm), but I eventually escaped from a crush of questions and requests for name-cards, autographs, and photo ops. Russian culture evidently holds science and technology in high regard.

Again, please read this as an indication of Russian attitudes toward the technological vision, though I suppose that the talk itself must have been OK.

[Update: See video here.]

Answering questions
at the Rusnanotech
press conference

Pressed to exhaustion

The Rusnanotech media staff set up a press conference for the first day, and on the second day organized my schedule to include six, then seven, then eight requests for interviews, after which I balked. Six of these were for television, including the main Moscow station.

Remarkably, to the best of my recollection only one interviewer asked the question, “What is nanotechnology?” The exception was an (apparently) American interviewer calling from Washington for the Voice of Russia — the Russian interviewers apparently expected their audiences to have some general knowledge of the subject. (For comparison, imagine an interviewer asking a planetary scientist, “What is spaceflight?”)

Part of the trade-show floor (science & business tracks elsewhere)

The annual Rusnanotech meetings are organized by Rusnano, a state-sponsored corporation established with a mandate to accelerate Russian progress in nanotechnology. Although this was my first trip to Moscow, discussions at Rusnanotech and afterward suggest that I may find reasons to return in the near future.

I recently gave the Inaugural Lecture for the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the Oxford Martin School, and the lecture video is now available.*

The talk describes the application of physical law and exploratory engineering to studies of the future potential of nanotechnology.

Summary here: News & Research Highlights.

* With thanks to Stuart Armstrong, researcher and occasional videographer

See also:

• Exploratory Engineering:
  Applying the predictive power of science
  to future technologies
• The Antiparallel Structures of Science and Engineering
• A Map of Science
• How to Learn About Everything

My invited review “Peptoids at the 7th Summit: Toward Macromolecular Systems Engineering” [pdf] kicks off the peptoid special issue of Biopolymers: Peptide Science.

Astoundingly, all the papers are open access.

Here’s the abstract:

Peptoids at the 7th Summit:
Toward Macromolecular Systems Engineering

Methods for facile synthesis of extraordinarily diverse peptide-like oligomers have placed peptoids at the center of a broad and vibrant area of foldamer science and technology. The 7th Peptoid Summit offered a perspective on the current state of peptoid science and technology and on prospects for engineering supramolecular assemblies that rival the complexity of biomolecular systems. Methods for engineering biomolecular systems based on DNA and protein are advancing rapidly, building a technology platform for engineering increasingly large and complex self-assembled nanosystems. A comparative review of the physical basis for DNA, protein, and peptoid engineering indicates that the characteristics of peptoids suit them for a strong role in developing self-assembled nanosystems. Physical parallels between peptoids and proteins indicate that peptoid engineering, like protein engineering, will require specialized software to support design. Access to novel side-chain functionality will enable peptoid designers to exploit novel binding interactions, including many that have been discovered and exploited in crystal engineering, a field that has extensively explored the self-assembly of small organic molecules to form well-ordered structures. Developments in DNA, protein, and inorganic nanotechnologies are converging to provide a technology platform for the design and fabrication of complex, functional, atomically precise nanosystems. Peptoid-based foldamer technologies can contribute to this convergence, expanding the scope of the emerging field of atomically precise macromolecular nanosystems.

As you can see, the paper goes beyond peptoids (a favorite topic here) to examine the broader context of foldamer design for engineering atomically precise systems. Read it for a summary of some important developments and prospects.

I am no longer in possession of a Russian secret regarding the lineup of speakers during the opening plenary session of Rusnanotech 2011 this morning.

Rusnanotech is organized by Russia’s state-sponsored nanotechnology investment corporation, Rusnano. My plenary talk followed a speech by Anatoly Chubais, the Chairman of Rusnano and former First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. The secret had been the arrival of Dmitry Medvedev, the President of the Russian Federation, who spoke next, closing the plenary session.

Other events today included a press conference, followed by a longer talk and discussion with an audience drawn from several technical universities, and then a relaxing time spent in a Moscow traffic jam.

More news later.

Rosa and I now work at Oxford’s Martin School in the new Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology. (My Oxford Martin School bio here; Rosa’s here.) We plan to be at Oxford while I finish work on my new book, Radical Abundance, to be published by PublicAffairs.

On November 10^th I will deliver the inaugural lecture for the Programme, “Exploring a timeless landscape: Physical law and the future of nanotechnology”.

About the talk

Subject: What physics tells us about the potential of advanced nanotechnologies, and why this points to an unexpected future.

A methodology grounded in physics and engineering can answer a limited yet illuminating range of questions about the potential of physical technology. This line of inquiry leads to a crucial question: What can physics tell us about the potential of advanced nanotechnologies? Well-established physical principles show that this potential embraces productive nanotechnologies that have the potential to transform the material basis of civilization. This prospect calls for re-evaluating both research opportunities and broader choices with consequences for the human future.

If you are in the area and want to schedule an appointment, please contact Rosa at GeographicEngine dot com.

I’m now working on a new book, Radical Abundance, scheduled for publication in 2013 by PublicAffairs. The book has a wide scope in both its content and intended audience, addressing scientists, a general reading audience, and thought leaders in the policy arena.

Radical Abundance will integrate and extend several themes that I’ve touched on in Metamodern, but will go much further. The topics include:

• The nature of science and engineering, and the prospects for a deep transformation in the material basis of civilization.
• Why all of this is surprisingly understandable.
• A personal narrative of the emergence of the molecular nanotechnology concept and the turbulent history of progress and politics that followed
• The quiet rise of macromolecular nanotechnologies, their power, and the rapidly advancing state of the art
• Incremental paths toward advanced nanotechnologies, the inherent accelerators, and the institutional challenges
• The technologies of radical abundance, what they are, and what they will enable
• Disruptive solutions for problems of economic development, energy, resource depletion, and the environment
• Potential pitfalls in competitive national strategies; shared interests in risk reduction and cooperative transition management
• Steps toward changing the conversation about the future

These topics interweave to make what will, I think, be a compelling story for readers with diverse interests, backgrounds, and concerns.

Update: As I mention in the comments, I’ll be posting the news on the blog when pre-orders are available, and inviting participation in pre-launch activities.

Publishers interested non-English-language rights please direct queries to Rosa at GeographicEngine dot com.

A paper in Science reports a design method that substantially advances the macromolecular technology base for building atomically precise nanosystems.

Background: foldamer engineering

As many readers know, biology shows an effective way build large, intricate, atomically precise systems: Use covalent chemistry to build chains of small building blocks, and design these chains to fold into nanoscale building blocks that undergo spontaneous assembly driven by Brownian motion and selective binding. This is a key step in climbing a ladder of fabrication technologies that leads to broader, more powerful capabilities.

The covalent synthesis of suitable chains of building blocks* was mastered decades ago, using programmable nanoscale machines that operate in biological systems. Designing structures that fold into compact nanoscale objects has become increasingly routine. Designing these building blocks to assemble, however, has lagged.

The approach

This highlights the importance of the paper in Science.

The authors (from the Baker lab, and I’m tempted to add “of course”) used RosettaDesign-based protein engineering tools to design proteins with surface structures that bind to a natural protein at a particular location, and with a particular orientation. Finding a protein that binds isn’t too hard — screening and evolutionary methods applied to antibodies (among other proteins) can do this — but achieving high affinity (tight binding) in a specific geometry is new.

They achieved this by designing binders with the correct geometry but mediocre binding, and then using selection (the equivalent of antibody affinity maturation) to refine the interfaces to achieve high affinity. The refinement process retains the initial alignment with good fidelity.

The binding target was a conserved region of the influenza hemagglutinin molecule, hinting at an approach to developing a subtype-independent anti-influenza therapy.

Solving a harder problem than necessary

Note, however, that authors didn’t address the problem of designing building-block interfaces, as an engineer would understand the task: They did something harder. Only side of the interface was designed to bind, while the other was a naturally occurring structure that normally binds nothing.
An engineer designing building-block assemblies, by contrast, would design the interface as a unit, not just one side of it.

It’s easy to see the advantages of being free to tweak both sides to achieve a good fit, to balance solubility and costs of desolvation, and to introduce specific binding interactions (hydrogen bonds, salt bridges, hydrophobic pockets on one side that match hydrophobic side chains on the other, etc.). Freedom to design both sides together also means that protein engineers — when pursuing engineering objectives — can exploit the best-understood motifs, rather than deliberately plunging into the unknown.

In conventional engineering, no one designing a system would freeze the design of one component, and then attempt to mate another to it at a location not designed for the purpose. Interfaces aren’t afterthoughts.

A companion perspective piece for the paper observes that

Although Fleishman et al. have produced a landmark result, it is evident that computational protein interface design is not a solved problem.

For the more symmetric engineering design problem, however, the methods described in the paper can be expected to provide a basis for reliable design tools.

I look forward to seeing the methods and the lab results. This should be low-hanging fruit.

* In other words, peptide foldamers (commonly called “proteins”) which include a range of high-performance engineering polymers.

See also:

• A High-Performance Polymer for Nanosytems Engineering
• Macromolecular Modeling for Molecular Systems Engineering
• The Molecular Machine Path to Molecular Manufacturing (1):
  Foldamers and Brownian Assembly
• The Antiparallel Structures of Science and Engineering