From the category archives:

Nanotechnology

Peptoid nanosheets:
A platform for new nanotechnologies

April 22, 2010

Fresh from Ron Zuckerman’s lab at the Molecular Foundry: a new kind of molecular membrane — thin and crystalline — made by self-assembly of peptoid oligomers. As I discussed in an earlier post, peptoids have remarkable potential as building blocks for self-assembled nanosystems. Peptoids are peptide-like structures, but with monomers that can be chosen from [...]

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Zinc fingers for gripping DNA

April 16, 2010

Zinc finger technology has great promise in genetic engineering and therapeutics, with potential applications in structural DNA nanotechnology, too.
Zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) are often called “game changing” because of the unprecedented way they precisely modify genes. Excitement about them is mirrored in the number of related scientific publications, which have climbed from hardly any 20 [...]

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Learning Bioinformatics

March 12, 2010

Bioinformatics is huge, growing, fast, and has a surprising range of applications to molecular systems engineering. Here’s a PLoS article: “A Quick Guide for Developing Effective Bioinformatics Programming Skills”. From the abstract:
Successful adoption of these principals will serve both beginner and experienced bioinformaticians alike in career development and pursuit of professional and scientific goals.

[...]

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The molecular approach
to atomically precise fabrication

March 12, 2010

A few days ago, I wrote a brief sketch of the status and paths forward in the molecular approach to atomically precise fabrication. It offers a sampling, not a full picture:

 

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How to study for a career in nanotechnology

February 24, 2010

Students often ask me for advice on how to study for a career in nanotechnology, and as you might imagine, providing a good answer is challenging. “Nanotechnology” refers to a notoriously broad range of areas of science and technology, and progress during a student’s career will open new areas, and some are yet to be [...]

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Exploiting strong, covalent bonds
for self assembly of robust nanosystems

February 6, 2010

Atomically precise self-assembly of complex structures can be engineered by providing for multiple binding interactions that

Cooperate to stabilize the correct configuration, in a thermodynamic sense, and

Do not stabilize any other configuration, in a kinetic sense

Roughly speaking, in the correct configuration, the parts fit together to allow all the binding interactions to operate simultaneously, and the [...]

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Self assembly and nanomachines:
Complexity, motion, and computational control

January 28, 2010

A commenter on the previous post raised several important issues, and my reply grew into this post. The comment is here, and my reply follows:

 

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Self-assembling nanostructures:
Building the building blocks

January 25, 2010

A set of interrelated advances in chemistry holds great promise for advancing the art of atomically precise fabrication. In this post, I’ll describe an emerging class of modular synthesis methods for making a diverse set of small, complex molecular building blocks.
The road to complex self-assembled nanosystems starts with stable molecular building blocks, and the more [...]

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Boronate esters, Suzuki coupling,
self-assembly, design software, etc.

January 24, 2010

I’ve been exploring some recent developments in chemical synthesis and self-assembly that suggest attractive possibilities for engineering robust self-assembling molecular systems. Boronate esters are involved in two ways.
Two days ago, I sat down to write about this, but then I read further into the literature, and learned substantially more. Yesterday, another cycle of the [...]

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Templates for atomically precise
metal-oxide nanostructures

January 13, 2010

The cover of Science features atomically precise inorganic nanostructures, polyoxometalates (POMs), that form by means of atomically precise templates. The outer rings of these structures contain 150 molybdenum atoms.
POMs are a diverse class of nanoscale metal-oxide structures with characteristics that make them remarkably attractive as potential components for self-assembled composite nanosystems.
These characteristics include:

Atomically precise [...]

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The Wall Street Journal on Feynman,
Drexler, History, and the Future

January 9, 2010

The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday, “Feynman and the Futurists”, about Feynman’s ideas, mine, how the nanotechnology bandwagon got rolling, and how the band got thrown off the wagon — and then, out of the shadows, the NRC report and why the U.S. government should implement the NRC’s recommendations.

[...]

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Molecular Manufacturing:
The NRC study and its recommendations

January 7, 2010

Part 6 of a series prompted by the recent 50th anniversary of Feynman’s historic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”. This is arguably the most important post of the series, or of this blog to date.
Topics:
— The most credible study of molecular manufacturing to date
— The study’s recommendations for Federal research support
— The [...]

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