Génio, visionário ou louco…

“… Drexler came up with a mind-boggling idea. He imagined a sea of minuscule robots that could move molecules so quickly and position them so precisely that they could produce almost any substance out of ordinary ingredients in a matter of hours. Start with a black box of so-called molecular assemblers, pour in a supply of cheap chemicals, and out would flow a profusion of gasoline, diamonds, rocket ships, whatever, all built without significant expenditure of capital or labor. In the bloodstream, tiny machines could cure diseases. In the air, they could remove pollutants. Drexler’s vision inspired a generation of chemists, computer scientists, and engineers to focus on science at the nanoscale…”

Wired

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Também os “impérios” moleculares acabam por cair.

“The ribosome: Proteins are molecular machines and the ribosome is one of (if not the) most important protein molecular machines. The ribosome is the machine which synthesizes proteins. One surprise is that this protein synthesis machine is mainly a large piece of RNA! This probably dates back from the time when RNA dominated the world and proteins were an afterthought.

The RNA-world hypothesis: How did life on Earth evolve? One facinating hypothesis is that the world was dominated by RNA. RNA is a cousin to DNA, but in some ways has properties of both DNA and proteins. Like DNA, RNA can encode genetic material in a way which can easily be replicated and read out. Like proteins, RNA can fold! By folding, it can create interesting molecular machines, which carry out enzyme-like capabilities. These RNA enzymes are called “Ribozymes”. The ribsome, perhaps one of the most important molecular machines, is actually a ribozyme! ”

Folding Fact of the Day, folding.stanford.edu

“UPTON, NY – Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have produced the first molecular-scale images of DNA binding to an adenovirus enzyme — a step they believe is essential for the virus to cause infection. The images, which appear on the cover of the October 2004 issue of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, show how binding to DNA may stimulate the enzyme and are already being used to design new antiviral drugs to block this interaction.”

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Bactérias transformam estireno em plástico biodegradável.

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