[Source: ScienceDaily] – A team of scientists from Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have programmed an autonomous molecular “robot” made out of DNA to start, move, turn, and stop while following a DNA track.
The development could ultimately lead to molecular systems that might one day be used for medical therapeutic devices and molecular-scale reconfigurable robots — robots made of many simple units that can reposition or even rebuild themselves to accomplish different tasks.
A paper describing the work appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.
For more information: Spiders at the Nanoscale: Molecules That Behave Like Robots