Nanotechnology may have found its Henry Ford
Tiny DNA robots could be the future of assembly lines.
By Jesse Emspak | Contributor for The Christian Science Monitor/ March 27, 2009 edition
Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor
Nano designer: Professor Nadrian Seeman has created two-armed worker robots made of DNA.
Nadrian Seeman sees a future filled with extremely small factory workers.
By small, the New York University chemistry professor means a billionth of a meter.
That’s the scale that he and others who work in the field of nanotechnology deal with on an everyday basis. By manipulating molecules, they attempt to build new materials and microscopic robots, possibly small and smart enough to move through human bodies.
But nanotechnology’s key obstacle has always been how to mass-produce these exotic molecules used as building blocks.
At this early stage, nanoscale manufacturing mistakes are pretty common. It would be as though a factory churned out cars where the rearview mirror was attached to the hood – and did so a third of the time.
But Professor Seeman has found a way around that. He and a Chinese team at Nanjing University have built a nanoscale factory worker. The tiny machine is made of DNA, the molecule that governs the way cells make proteins. But this DNA isn’t like that found in human cells – it’s synthetic and can’t reproduce by itself.
But like all DNA, it holds information in the form of genetic code. Seeman “programs” his tiny machine by stringing the right combinations of DNA – much in the way computer engineers use binary code.
“We’re prototyping the notion of programmable patterns,” Seeman says.
The machine has two “arms” made of strings of DNA that are attached by another chain of DNA.
Each arm has a molecule on the end that attaches to other molecules and aligns them in a set order. These sticky ends only connect with a particular building block, and Seeman can program them to specify which molecule he wants.
This allows him to arrange pieces and form specific molecules with some precision – similar to the way a robotic automobile factory can be told what kind of car to make.
After the arms create the desired molecules one at a time, the whole mixture is heated and cooled, which causes the correct molecules to displace the incorrect ones.
This fixes any errors and is what makes the “factory” reliable enough to mass-produce.
Thus far, Seeman’s team has made molecules with various shapes – squares and triangles – that don’t have a specific function. The next step is constructing functional molecules – but he is mum on the details.
He imagines building several tiny DNA machines and programming them to work in harmony, creating more complex substances such as a fiber or even an electronic device.
Seeman has been working on nanorobotics for several years. He first perfected a one-armed version in 2006. It was the first time anyone had put together such a device in a DNA array, he says.
Now, that he’s pulled off a two-arm design, Seeman says that his team can finally build things.
The big leap in Seeman’s work is the ability to “remote control” the DNA arms, says Milan Stojanovic, a professor of medicine at Columbia University and director of the National Science Foundation’s Center for Molecular Cybernetics. Finally, his team can set up a protocol to fix errors along the way.
“They start with the same basic structure, but then can ‘build’ on this basic structure depending [on] what they have in solution,” Dr. Stojanovic says in an e-mail. Being able to get high yields is also important for making future progress more rapidly.
Seeman’s work is rather unique, Stojanovic says. “Ned is unpredictably creative in his approach to science,” he says.
Another key contribution to future nanotechnology work is how Seeman manipulates the strand of DNA that connects the arms, says Paul Rothemund, a research associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Seeman borrowed a technique called “DNA origami” to act like a pegboard for the arms, which can be reconfigured. DNA is expensive, Mr. Rothemund explains. So, Seeman’s adaptive, elastic system uses fewer pieces of DNA to make a given molecular configuration. Rothemund likens it to having a set of clamps or vice grips that could be rotated to hold differently shaped objects, rather than using a whole new set of tools for every project.
Chengde Mao, an associate professor at Purdue University, is particular hopeful that Seeman’s work – and that of other nanotech scientists – could allow for breakthroughs in DNA, building three dimensional structures.
Seeman credits an art print by mathematical illusionist M.C. Escher for starting him on the road to using DNA as a way into nanotechnology in the early 1980s.
After trying unsuccessfully to grow crystals for experiments, he spoke with a colleague who was doing work in recombinant DNA, a brand-new field at the time. Seeman was “thinking about the Escher print ‘Depth,’ ” where six-finned fish float through space, he says. “I started thinking about a six-armed, three-dimensional junction.”
He began picturing how to shape DNA that way. At the time, nanotechnology was in its infancy, and most chemists were working with inorganic molecules. Seeman, however, decided that DNA was a better way to start because it has a built-in structure.
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Comments
2. g Wash | 03.28.09
My only point is that “research”
should be done on “one’s own dime”,
not the taxpayers’.
The dna-robot idea sounds
interesting tho’.
3. Lynda Eaton | 03.28.09
I have been looking for a simple article on this subject for about a year. Thanks
5. David Abecassis | 03.28.09
The real nanotechnology revolution is not a cloak for the now underperforming biotech industry. Much of the promiss of DNA technology has taken the cloak of “nanotechnology” in order to rekindle investor interest in DNA based technology. DNA based science has always held promiss in medicine and other areas, but new business methods appropriate to the science were never fully developped. So it is now competeing with real nanotechnology based science for investor dollars. But investors have short memories. Henry ford mass produced cars. Until nanotechnology has mass produceable products that the average consumer can purchase, it will be an exciting but unfulfilled realm of technology; commercially speaking. Nanotechnology which is of interest an mass produceable involves organoclays and carbon nanotube varieties. These are legitimate nanotechnologies which are already in early stages of commercialization. Calling molecular biology nanotechnology distracts investors from the real opportunities which will need funding, and also provide good investor return prospects.
6. dr burke | 03.28.09
I think the future of enews will start of with e-ink, but will eventually become self replicating nano-e-dots that can change color, depending upon what data is sent to them. It will look like a sheet of paper, crumble like a sheet of paper, but when tapped or touched by a human, then heat from a human will activate the nano-e-dots and color images will appear. This will be a new form
of information. The images will even be in 3-D, with the nano-e-dots coming up out of the page, to form an image. If you accidentally scratch the surface, the nano-e-bots will self-replicate
and fill in the scratch. When you are done with it, simply wad it
up and throw it away and the nano-e-dots will take on a different
application. Clean up the house, remove dirt from floor or whatever it has been programmed to do. These same nano-e-dots could become clothes for people to wear, with changing designs and
feel just like real clothing, but electronic and self replicating.
dr burke.
Nanotechnology may have found its Henry Ford | csmonitor.com
Begin forwarded message:
From: “dr.burke (http://homepage.mac.com/roaeja2)”
Date: March 28, 2009 7:19:53 PM GMT-08:00
To: president@whitehouse.gov
Cc: letters@msnbc.com, vice-president@whitehouse.gov
Subject: epapers
We are on the verge of a new paradigm; where ink and paper
are going to be replaced by enews paper or electronic paper, in full
color and easy to read. This is just a few years away and when
it happens, all of those laid off reporters will be needed to put out the stories. The enews paper will be able to download any news
source in the world via ultra wifi connection to the internet and
enews business will give it to the subscriber for free, if they sign
up for internet delivery, a small monthly fee.
What the Obama Administration isn’t doing and should be doing, is putting money into this new medium of news delivery, so all of those laid off reporters can go back to work, within a new paradigm of news reporting.
Oh, the enews paper will also deliver video news and
other multimedia, be solar power and almost indestructible.
But, it is now up to President Obama, to bring this new paradigm into existence.
dr burke.
“Real-life newspapers have been slashing staff, freezing salaries and even closing because of steep declines in advertising and circulation. The New York Times recently announced it would cut 100 employees and institute 5 percent pay cuts for most of its staff in exchange for 10 days of leave.”
8. Jimmy Magnum | 03.29.09
Nanotechnology is such a small business. I should think a thimble might hold all all the work done this century. Why should mankind worry itself about such small matters? Our forefathers built giant dams and gargantuan bridges, skyscrapers that leapt into the sky and we are reduced to building molecules.
When the best we can hope for is such small achievements, perhaps that is all we will get. Why does science stumble over the practical and necessary, the food of mankind, the energy of the future, and waste its time on the tiny fraud of nano this and nano that?
Nanotech is a dead end street waiting for a traffic light, stuck on red and nowhere to go if it does get a green.
11. dennis | 03.31.09
re:
“…giant dams and gargantuan bridges, skyscrapers that leapt into the sky…”
Remember that children begin with crayons the size of a small flashlight, creating letters many inches high; the skilled adult uses a small pen creating beautifully crafted manuscripts. It is always easier to create the large, the gross, the gargantuan, than it is to tame one’s mind and hand to the task of creating the miniscule. Nanotech will truly be the wave of the future, as the tiny titans re-craft nature to increase food production, cure disease, and assist in the gathering of energy.
12. Nestor | 03.31.09
This is wonderful research and money should be thrown at it from every direction! It’s literally a second industrial revolution in the making and quibbling about it’s funding it so shortsighted as to be practically blind.
13. Flippin Cool | 04.01.09
He said he credits the Escher work “Depth,” where six-finned fish float through space, saying he “started thinking about a six-armed, three-dimensional junction.” But if you look at that Escher work, it shows a five-finned fish - Right Pectoral, Left Pectoral, Dorsal, Pelvic, and Caudal. Fortunately for Dr. Seeman, he is a contributor to “Assembly and characterization of five-arm and six-arm DNA branched junctions” (Biochemistry, 1991, 30 (23), 5667-5674• DOI: 10.1021/bi00237a005 • Publication Date (Web): 01 May 2002). LOL!
15. skeptical | 04.08.09
What could go wrong… god knows we need self-replicating DNA-robots instead of ink on paper. How have we made it this far without it, I wonder?
16. Vics | 04.10.09
What the side effects of this new nanotechnology? Our privacy? Our immune system? How do we know everything are going right for 200 yrs from now?
If broadband network are 21th c development then this tech are 22th c development.
Every medical, espionage, multimedia gadgets , or even GPS system will be inserted to our inner skin or our new baby. What a technology and a privacy?
Will be passport required in the future? inside our skin? planted to our skull?
*For ye seek good, it was look good. For ye seek evil, it was look evil*
17. james green - NM | 04.20.09
I want NANO to be interactive with us and our environment totaly, building blocks for real buildings, purification, etc. As an architect can Nano’s do these? JWG
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7. Fique por dentro Ford » Blog Archive » Nanotechnology may have found its Henry Ford | csmonitor.com | 04.02.09
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1. Tara | 03.27.09
I think more credit is due Rothmund than you give him in the article. He is a senior researcher at CalTech; he developed “DNA Origami”, which you could easily have tied to his name since he is mentioned in the piece. Hopefully, in the near future, there will be more openness and sharing among our researchers, bolstered by healthy funding from the government!