As usual, nano- and bio-tech seem bound to be tied together. Nanofactories on the horizon? Maybe.

Arrows point to nanotech's future

19 September 2001
MARK HAW

Cells are a nanotechnologist's dream. Each contains perfectly engineered motors - proteins - transporting and delivering chemicals with unerring precision, all at the millionths of a millimetre scale. Now researchers are printing microscopic maps to marshal this tiny workforce....

The dream, now a step closer to reality, is to print complete factories onto silicon chips. Channels, arrows, and other more complex shapes will direct microtubule cargo trucks back and forth, collecting, moving and depositing chemicals, products and waste, in a fine-tuned microscopic production line.

Says Uyeda, the next step will be to find a way to load moving microtubules. The researchers are also working on ways to switch the motor proteins on and off using electric fields.

The Roman engineer Vitruvius insisted that every architect should have a knowledge of anatomy. As Markus Porto, at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany, points out, the biological motor should be a similar source of inspiration to technologists.

[Yep, edited version, so recommend using the link if at all interested in this.]