“Nanotechnology” conjures a world of hard, usually silicon structures doing hi-tech things on a ridiculously small scale. But most of the actually existing nanotechnology in the world resides in nature and hardly a week goes by now without Science or Nature reporting ever increasingly detailed structures of these intricate proteinaceous marvels. It is such nanomachines that power our living world: the ribosomes that create ticker tapes of protein; the two photosystems in plants that use the sun’s energy, carbon dioxide and water to make all the world’s biomass; the respiratory complexes in the cellular batteries, the mitochondria, culminating in life’s little dynamo, ATP synthase, a protein complex that really does resemble a dynamo, with a revolving core.
But taking a technologies’ eye to nature’s nano opens up unexpected vistas. DNA is the most engineering-like of nature’s nanostructures: a pure double helix, stately, and relatively inert compared to the knobbly masses of protein complexes. The platonic view of DNA is even more to the fore in a new technique –developed at the Technical University, Munich, and reported in Science (27 March, 2015, pp. 1446—52) – in which DNA nanostructures are built, not using DNA’s base-pairing mechanism but with shape-recognition sites reminiscent of the projections and recesses of Lego. Self-assembly takes place in solution and the structures can be reconfigured simply by changing the concentration of the magnesium chloride medium. Various structures have been created, including an actuator, a switchable gear, an unfoldable nanobook, and a nanorobot. The illustrations show that this work is approaching the visions sketched out by the nano-pioneer Eric Drexler, but using a very different method to the ones he envisaged.
But taking a technologies’ eye to nature’s nano opens up unexpected vistas. DNA is the most engineering-like of nature’s nanostructures: a pure double helix, stately, and relatively inert compared to the knobbly masses of protein complexes. The platonic view of DNA is even more to the fore in a new technique –developed at the Technical University, Munich, and reported in Science (27 March, 2015, pp. 1446—52) – in which DNA nanostructures are built, not using DNA’s base-pairing mechanism but with shape-recognition sites reminiscent of the projections and recesses of Lego. Self-assembly takes place in solution and the structures can be reconfigured simply by changing the concentration of the magnesium chloride medium. Various structures have been created, including an actuator, a switchable gear, an unfoldable nanobook, and a nanorobot. The illustrations show that this work is approaching the visions sketched out by the nano-pioneer Eric Drexler, but using a very different method to the ones he envisaged.
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