Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!aurora!labrea!agate!ucbvax!OZ.AI.MIT.EDU!MINSKY From: MINSKY@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Nanotechnology Message-ID: Date: 3 Feb 88 06:25:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 26 Approved: ailist@kl.sri.com Those reactionaries who were flaming at Drexler's ideas ought to read this week's issue of Nature. A group at IBM San Jose Almaden Research Center have used a scanning tunneling microscope to pin a single molecule of dimethyl phthalate to the surface of a graphite sheet and then to rearrange its atoms, and see the results. The exact details of the rearrangement are not yet controllable, but the aromatic subgroups are clearly visible. (Dimethyl phthalate is about the size of two benzene reings.) The operations can be done at sub-microsecond speed, using the order of .1 microsecond pulses at 3.5 volts. Progress in this direction certainly seems faster than almost everyone would have expected. I will make a prediction: In the next few years, various projects will request and obtain large budgets for the human genome sequencing" enterprise. In the meantime, someone will succeed in stretching single strands of protein, DNA, or RNA across crystalline surfaces, and sequence them, using the STM method. Eventually, it should become feasible to do such sequencing at multi-kilocycle rates, so that an entire chromosome could be logged in a few days. Using this system for constructive operations lies further in the future; however, it might sooner be feasible to introduce controlled damage to genetic elements. This would, for example, make it easy to inactivate particular gene-promoters and, thus, to remove a bad gene. Incidentally, these operations can be performed inside a drop of liquid (the STM does not need a vacuum). So it ought to be feasible to put the altered genetic material back into a cell.