Designer Challenges: Learning from Nature

How can a process be made faster, use smaller and cheaper components, and remain more stable, less likely to fall apart at the wrong moment? These are engineering challenges, and they apply to bioengineering as well as to macro, human-scale engineering.

Engineers have been making smaller and smaller machines for decades. The latest "nano" (one million of a millimeter) machines fit easily on the head of a pin. A recent article on the Web describes the way Zurich scientists used a scanning microscope needle to position accurately single molecules at room temperature, especially useful temperature for most of the work.

Now there is new excitement as scientists design new machines made from the real minature machinery of life. They are assembling biomolecules and operating upon them.

The beautiful "Japanese Lantern" molecule shown above is a "cyclophane" made by Makao Nakazaki at Okasa University by attaching struts to two benzene rings. These type of molecules can work as the basis of natural enzyme mimics.

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