The Evolution of Nanomachinery

csy writes: "Harvard's George Whitesides has a wonderful article on Nanomachinery in this month's issue of Scientific American. He casts doubts on the Drexlerian vision of mechanical assemblers, and argues that biology and chemistry, rather than mechanical engineering point to the answers in the quest for nanomachines."

Comments

Even smaller scale though?

[apsmith]

The article talks about the machinery of cells as an example of existing nano-machinery on which we should base the development of artificial nano-machines - but the proteins and other bio-molecules in a cell are actually pretty large compared to some of the things we can do even now with STM microscope tips and carbon nanotubes. Even the smallest virus is 0.05 microns across, and we're already regularly making semiconductor components on that scale. Admittedly the virus has some complex internal structure. But biology uses a very limited set of chemical elements (mainly C, H, O, N) and I think one of the main ideas with nano-machines was that there's no need to restrict yourself to the limited set of things used in biology...