Image credit: ESO
dna transport system of protein cargo holders
Their basic idea is to transport reactive molecules in any desired location. I don't know if they've actually demonstrated controlled chemical reactions with this; but the fact that they've published this would suggest to me that they've actually gone beyond what's being reported here. One thought pointed out in the article is they can use this to speed up reactions(and designate which molecules are to combine in which ways) with this 'nanosystem.' Lets make no bones about it, this is nanomanufacturing to some degree.
Getting back to the speeding up of reactions, I've recently shown another great nano-engineering breakthrough in terms of the use of dna as encoding chemical reaction networks. The above transport system could be used to speed up the desired reactions of the dna chemical controllers.
As usual, we've got some pretty significant and fundamental nanomanufacturing ability here; the pace of engineering can only increase from here. A year from now . . . no, a month from now, they can do all kinds of stuff!
Also, I link to the Physorg article because it has a video of the dna-protein nanosystem in action! I can't seem to find a youtube of it unfortunately. I first heard of this through E-Science, an A.I controlled science news websight!
- In more nanosystem news!
I also showed some exciting colloidal chemistry of arbitrary nanoshapes awhile back. I also used that to show James Burke's Connections episode 10 where he points out some early colloidal chemistry and all the possible applications just with that basic colloidal ability. Other's find this nanosystem more exciting than the dna-nanomanufacturing indicated above.
Photo-Activated Colloidal Dockers for Cargo Transportation
- 12Nov2013 edit
I found this video of Ned Seeman, the founder of dna-nanomanufacturing. There's nanomanufacturing, on a theoretical side, before Ned Seeman, in Eric Drexler and before him way back in 1957, I do believe, with Richard Feynman. Ned Seeman's idea has perhaps given more experimental hope to actually doing nanomanufacturing(for those who haven't been following my blog posts!). It's a little interesting to hear him explain his inspiration for dna-nanomanufacturing.
I remember reading an article by him before, where he explains how looking at a Escher drawing, and seeing feedback; the feedback inspired him to manipulate dna in artificial ways to do unconventional things with dna. Ned Seeman in the video linked(for some strange reason, I couldn't get the video selection of youtubes to find the youtube video; it just doesn't show up). So, Ned Seeman was influenced in a kind of James Burkian connections/influences(the not necessarily logical connections, but the vague indirect connections; for the more logical connections, see my "Nature and Origin of Mathematical concepts" article, third to first post of my blog here).
Ned Seeman shows some more interesting artistic insights to his thought and explorations in the video linked below. He also shows some history of his dna-nanotechnology development as well. I don't think he shows everything he's ever done or is currently doing. Since the breakthroughs from last year which drastically reduced the timescales of dna-nanotechnology self assembly, I've been waiting for news from his group and Paul Rothemund. So far, no news; but, as you can see, others have made news.
Programming Nanoscale Structure Using DNA-Based Information
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