Artificial molecular manufacturing machine mimics nature

January 11, 2013

Illustration of artificial molecular machine (Credit: University of Manchester)



Leigh explains: “The development of this machine, which uses molecules to make molecules in a synthetic process, is similar to the robotic assembly line in car plants. Such machines could ultimately lead to the process of making molecules becoming much more efficient and cost effective.

“This will benefit all sorts of manufacturing areas, as many manmade products begin at a molecular level. For example, we’re currently modifying our machine to make drugs such as penicillin.”

The rotaxane-based machine is just a few nanometers long (a few millionths of a millimeter) and can only be seen using special instruments. Its creation was inspired by natural complex molecular factories where information from DNA is used to program the linking of molecular building blocks in the correct order.

The most extraordinary of these factories is the ribosome, a massive molecular machine found in all living cells that links amino acids together in the order specified by messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules. Leigh’s machine is based on the ribosome.

How it works

A nanometer-sized ring moves along a molecular track, picking up up building blocks (amino acids) in its path, to synthesize a desired peptide in a specific order.


