MITRE-Harvard team assembles a functional nanoelectronic control computer
Foresight Update 27.02—April 7, 2014
ISSN 1078-9731
Nanotech News
Discuss these news stories at http://foresight.org/nanodot.
In this issue:
Here at Nanodot we often report on basic research that may lie on the path to atomically precise manufacturing, and we also frequently report on nanoscale science and technology research that promises near-term revolutionary developments in medicine, computation, energy and other application areas, but we seldom have anything to say about the transition from research to commercial production. …
Three years ago we noted “the world’s first programmable nanoprocessor” achieved by a collaboration between Harvard and MITRE … This year the same interdisciplinary team has taken further key steps toward a functioning nanoelectronic computer based on integrating several of the tiles that they first reported three years ago. …
The use of structural DNA nanotechnology to build atomically precise scaffolds for positioning systems of molecular machines and other nanoscale functional elements … took a large step forward with the recent demonstration of the ability to build large, rigid three-dimensional DNA cages. The key innovation was the use of DNA origami to make struts to stabilize corners …
Advancements targeted to improving medical care continue to provide tools that could advance development of high throughput atomically precise manufacturing. In the latest example, chemists have developed a method to add a functional group to a specific carbon atom several atoms away from a given atom. …
“Integration” was the theme of the 2014 Foresight Technical Conference, and the invited speakers covered a broad range of scopes. Within the human scope, topics included the integration of nanoscale technologies into social, political, and economic spheres. Within the technical scope, topics included the integration of atomic and molecular parts into nanoscale structures and devices, as well as into existing and projected commercial products. …
Back in July of 2012 we noted here the advent of a new online game that allows players to design RNA molecules, and wondered whether it could be part of a crowd-sourced, citizen science path toward high throughput, atomically precise manufacturing. It turns out that this group of game-players, with the benefit of feedback from lab experiments, has consistently outperformed the best available computerized design algorithms. …
Nanoparticles designed for drug delivery run the gamut from very artificial components like gold or specially designed RNA to particles that adapt or mimic naturally occurring nanoparticles. A noteworthy example of the latter is adapting biology’s “good cholesterol”, the high-density lipoprotein particle, to deliver anti-inflammatory drugs to prevent recurrent heart attacks and strokes. …
—Nanodot posts by James Lewis and Stephanie C.
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