NANOTECHNOLOGY

We and many others are interested in possible future biological nanotechnologies. I do not know enough of the history to sketch the evolution of these ideas. Currently, however, it is not difficult to pick out at least three strains that might be relevant. One is the work of Nadrian Seeman and others to make DNA-based structures. Another is de-novo protein design (not well-advanced) and structurally-informed protein engineering (well-advanced). Another is the work of people like my coworkers, who are good at putting domains of proteins together to make new proteins to answer biological questions. Our increasing ability to engineer proteins that perform more sophisticated tasks may spin off into possible avenues for cellular engineering, for example the construction of logic devices.

However, as Gary Stix has pointed out, the very term nanotechnology attracts a number of less serious people, among whom at least two other common ideas seem to pop up with great frequency. One is little robots performing general preventive maintaince and surgery from within, which would no doubt lead to immortality. The other is using related little robots to record all the information in the brain, which would no doubt allow consciousness to be uploaded into computers, leading to a virtual immortality. People who believe deeply in the second often arrange to have their heads frozen in liquid nitrogen after their death.

Because it is probably now appropriate to speak of a biological nanotechnology, and because my coworkers and I will be following, and we hope, contributing, to its development, I would welcome correspondance and pointers to other relevant readings.

For the moment, I have simply listed references that seem to be lighter on the cryonicists and those tiny aterial scubbing robots.

Roger Brent, 6 September 1996