Posts tagged as:

self assembly

An advance in atomically precise
building-block assembly

May 27, 2011

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 [...]

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Molecular machine animations
in the New York Times

November 16, 2010

The New York Times has an article, “Where Cinema and Biology Meet”, on the recent high-quality animations of biomolecular machines.
The author, Erik Olsen, highlights Drew Barry as the Steven Spielberg of the field:
Mr. Berry’s work is revered for artistry and accuracy within the small community of molecular animators, and has also been shown in museums, [...]

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Evolutionary refinement of engineered molecules

October 5, 2010

Blind variation and focused selection have made the biosphere, and they’re being used in the lab to make functional biomolecular components. The laboratory methods often go under the names of “directed evolution” and (in single-round versions) “high-throughput screening”, and they hold promise as partners for rational design in macromolecular systems engineering.
As background, here are [...]

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Boron is the new carbon…

September 13, 2010

…and I read it in EMBO Reports.
Declaring that “boronate esters are the new [reversible covalent linkers in foldamers and self-assembly]” would be less playful and entertaining, but I say something like that here: “Exploiting strong, covalent bonds for self assembly of robust nanosystems”.

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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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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:

 

Subscribe

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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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The Molecular Machine Path
to Molecular Manufacturing (2):
Exploiting Improved Methods and Building Blocks

December 27, 2009

Part 4 of a series on the history and prospects of advanced nanotechnology concepts, prompted by the upcoming 50th anniversary of Feynman’s historic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”.

Rigid, structurally diverse bis-peptide oligomers C. Schafmeister, JACS, 2006

In this post, I’d like to outline the promise of fabrication technologies that are within reach of [...]

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The Molecular Machine Path
to Molecular Manufacturing (1):
Foldamers and Brownian Assembly

December 25, 2009

Part 3 of a series prompted by the upcoming 50th anniversary of Feynman’s historic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”.

Lathe, 1911 A machine tool, used to make machines

In my view, the most attractive way forward in developing advanced molecular machine systems is by exploiting the molecular machine systems that are available today. Historically, [...]

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Molecular Nanomachines: Physical Principles and Implementation Strategies

October 1, 2009

I’ve migrated another paper to E-drexler.com:

Drexler, KE. “Molecular Nanomachines: Physical Principles and Implementation Strategies”, Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure, 23:377-405 (1994).
(With thanks to Robert Bradbury for the original HTML conversion.)

Click to read.

See also:

The Physical Basis of Atomically Precise Manufacturing
A Telescope Aimed at the Future
Productive nanosystems: the physics of molecular fabrication [pdf] (from [...]

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A DNA Origami Box

May 10, 2009

A paper in the current issue of Nature reports the fabrication of DNA origami boxes ~35 nm on a side; to my knowledge, these are the first closed structures made by these means.
Paul Rothemund’s initial 2006 Nature article [pdf] described a methodical way to form patterns of raised features on origami, based on a raster [...]

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