Light heavy lifters

摘要

Nanotubes of various sorts may (see previous article) provide the building blocks of the brave new world of nano-technology that the field's true believers envisage developing over the next few years. Such believers think that it will be possible to build complicated "nanoscale" devices (ie, mechanisms whose components have dimensions measured in nanometres, or billionths of a metre). But if such machines are to be built, something will be needed to put those components together. Fortunately, the believers have an answer to this puzzle. They envisage the heavy lifting (or rather the light lifting) being done by modified versions of natural molecules called motor proteins. These proteins are what give muscles their pulling power, make sperm strong swimmers and even drag the chromosomes in a dividing cell out of each other's way.