Three-dimensional DNA industrial nanorobots. **Researchers at Zhou Feng in New York and Ningbo University in China say they have created tiny robots built from DNA that can reproduce themselves.
The nanobot could one day perform search and destroy cancer cells in human blood without having to perform surgery or collect toxic waste from the ocean.
This tiny mechanism is so small that 1 can fit on the width of a sheet of paper.
Nanoscale industrial robots have the potential to serve as a fabrication platform, capable of automating repetitive tasks to process and produce nanomaterials with consistent precision and accuracy," said Feng Zhou, principal investigator of the project and staff member of the Department of Physics at New York University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The 100-nanometer-wide mechanism manipulates the different parts of the DNA strand and aligns them correctly so that they can be "soldered" together and then move on to the next step, Zhou said. They devised a new way to fold DNA in three-dimensional space that can replicate itself indefinitely.
Previous research on DNA robots has been limited to 2D construction.
The introduction of multi-axis precise folding and positioning as a tool for nanofabrication technology will open the door to more complex and useful nano and micro devices," Zhou said.
In an interview with New Scientist, Andrew Surman, a chemistry professor who specializes in nanomaterials, said: "It's tricky to assemble these things. In the synthetics and biomolecules we make, how things fold is very important. When things are folded wrong, they don't work.
Zhou said his team's work builds on four decades of advances in DNA nanotechnology. He pointed to a number of innovative inventions, including machines, enzymes, self-replicators, computers, and nucleic acid "walkers" – involving applications in nanomedicine, diagnostic sensing of biological samples, and nanorobotics.
Our demonstration heralds that nanomachines and robots can be programmed and controlled by light and heat to produce biocompatible structures and devices at the nanoscale," he said.
Richard Handy, of Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study, observed, "It would be a way to add an enzyme or protein to a cell that the DNA in the cell doesn't need to make it." Some people have genetic defects that they can't make enzymes, so this could be a kind of building enzymes for them in the tissues. If you have a lot of people with type 2 diabetes and insulin secretion issues, maybe you can get one of these DNA scaffolds to make insulin.
Science fiction has solved the problem of the development of nanotechnological devices, sometimes in apocalyptic stories.
E. Eric DrexlerEric Drexler, a pioneer in nanotechnology research, imagined a nightmare scenario in his 1986 book, Engines of Creation.
Imagine such a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals, replicating itself," he said. "The first replicator assembles one replica in a thousand seconds, and then two replicators build two more in the next thousand seconds, four replicators build four, and eight replicators build eight. At the end of the ten hours, there were not 68 new replicators, but more than <> billion. In less than a day, they will weigh up to a ton; In less than two days, they will overtake the Earth.
He coined the now famous term "gray slime" to refer to the catastrophic replication of nanobots that eventually consume all the biomass.
Zhou's report, "Towards 3D DNA Industrial Nanorobots," was published in the journal Science Robotics.
More information:Feng Zhou et al., Towards a 3D DNA Industrial Nanorobot, Science Robotics (2023). doi： 10.1126/scirobotics.adf1274