An advance in Atomically Precise Building-Block Assembly

[TECH NEWS]

A paper in Science reports a design method that substantially advances the macromolecular technology base for building atomically precise nanosystems. As many readers know, biology shows an effective way to build large, intricate, atomically precise systems: Use covalent chemistry to build chains of small building blocks, and design these chains to fold into nanoscale building blocks that undergo spontaneous assembly driven by Brownian motion and selective binding. This is a key step in climbing a ladder of fabrication technologies that leads to broader, more powerful capabilities. The covalent synthesis of suitable chains of building blocks was mastered decades ago, using programmable nanoscale machines that operate in biological systems. Designing structures that fold into compact nanoscale objects has become increasingly routine. Designing these building blocks to assemble, however, has lagged. The authors (Sarel J. Fleishman et al., from the Baker lab) used RosettaDesign-based protein engineering tools to design proteins with surface structures that bind to a natural protein at a particular location, and with a particular orientation. Finding a protein that binds isn’t too hard, but achieving high affinity (tight binding) in a specific geometry is new.

5/27/2011,  Eric Drexler, Metamodern.com