DNA `robot' could repair body tissue
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Your support makes all the difference.SCIENTISTS HAVE built a "gene machine" out of DNA which could form the basis of a robot small enough to be injected into the body to repair tissues.
A breakthrough in building DNA molecules that can be moved at will might be the forerunner of robots which could patrol the body in a similar way to the submarine adventure in the film Fantastic Voyage. A robotic arm has been made of DNA molecules in an attempt to build machines for chemical factories so small that hundreds could fit on a pinhead.
Some scientists envisage that more advanced versions of the robots could guard the body, seeking and destroying invading microbes, scraping furred- up arteries and repairing tissues ravaged by ageing.
The robotic arm is thousands of times smaller than the smallest metal cogs and wheels, themselves only visible under a microscope, that have been made as part of research into nano-technology.
The devices are on the scale of a millionth of a millimetre. Scientists at New York University, led by Nadrian Seeman, a chemistry professor, built the arm of a nano-robot out of strands of DNA, the chemical blueprint of organisms, which has the innate ability to replicate itself. "Using synthetic DNA ... we have constructed a controllable molecular-mechanical system ... In the long term the work will have implications for the development of nano-scale robots and for molecular manufacturing," Professor Seeman said.
His team has already made static devices from DNA but this is believed to be the first time anyone has produced a moving structure from a biological molecule.
A more immediate goal of the research is to place nano-robots on a "production line" to make complex substances, such as genetically engineered drugs, that are now made by micro-organisms.
Professor Seeman said there are still formidable obstacles to using roving robots in the body but it is the kind of futuristic application many people are thinking about.
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