Engineered bacteria that incorporate unnatural amino acids at multiple positions provide a new tool that may facilitate designing proteins to fold more predictably into molecular machinery components.

Ultrasound was used to pull on polymer chains attached to opposite sides of a chemically almost inert molecular ring, splitting it into its two components.

News articles by Jon Cartwright on the Chemistry World news site and by Michael Berger at Nanowerk describe a significant molecular machine milestone achieved by the research groups of David A. Leigh (winner of the 2007 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for Theory) and Anne-Sophie Duwez. The research was reported in Nature Nanotechnology [abstract]. [...]

A green nanotechnology roadmap released by the American Chemical Society describes the opportunities and barriers to developing commercial applications of nanomaterials that present little threat of harm to health and the environment, and concludes with an action agenda to more forward.

Submit your own work or nominate a colleague for the 2011 Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes.

Will an inexpensive automated evolution machine accelerate the development of molecular machine systems by simultaneously evolving multiple parts to improve function?

New computational method screens for small molecules that bind to RNA molecules that move through a variety of conformations.

We’re going to take a shot at doing a live webcast of Foresight@Google: 25th Anniversary Conference and Celebration. See this page for schedule and link: http://foresight.org/reunion/schedule.html It’s free so please have patience if we run into any technical difficulties. You can try sending questions to speakers by using this Twitter tag (though in-person participants get first [...]

A new book collects the papers and discussions from the 2007 Solvay Conference “From Noncovalent Assemblies to Molecular Machines”.

I. Foresight@Google: Registration Deadline – Wed June 22nd II.  Open Foresight Reception in Palo Alto – Friday June 24th III. Senior Associates Reunion Banquet – Saturday June 25th IV. Thiel Foundation’s 20Under20 to attend Foresight@Google ================================== I. Foresight@Google Registration Deadline – Wednesday June 22nd Foresight@Google – June 24-26, 2011 25th Anniversary Conference Celebration & Reunion Weekend [...]

Does the recent discovery that quantum tunneling controls a chemical reaction of a carbene complicate theoretical studies of nanotechnology, especially of diamond mechanosynthesis?

Computational studies show that small diamond structures of the type that might serve as nanoparts in diamondoid molecular machinery are structurally stable.

A biochemical circuit built from 74 small DNA molecules demonstrates an approach that may enable embedded control of molecular devices.

We are proud to announce our final conference program for Foresight@Google‘s 25th Anniversary Conference Celebration, held June 25-26 in Mountain View, CA.  For $50 off registration use code: NANODOT This weekend – full of plenary talks, panels, and breakout sessions – is a unique opportunity to be stimulated, enlightened and inspired by direct interaction with [...]

A Monte-Carlo simulation shows that a simple self-replicating RNA-like molecule in a specific protective environment could evolve the ability to translate a genetic code to produce peptides.

Midnight tonight Pacific time is the deadline for the early registration rate on Foresight@Google, our 25th Anniversary Conference and Celebration. Check it out here: http://foresight.org/reunion Past participants have said: “This is mind candy for my soul. Having attended for two years now, this event stands alone in my mind as an opportunity to explore new horizons, [...]

A bacterial virus called M13 was genetically engineered to control the arrangement of carbon nanotubes, improving solar-cell efficiency by nearly one-third.

New software for scaffolded DNA origami makes it easier to predict what shape will result from a given DNA template.

Phage-assisted continuous evolution of proteins is roughly a hundred times faster than conventional laboratory evolution of proteins, perhaps speeding the development of components for molecular machine systems.

The capabilities of scaffolded DNA origami procedures have been expanded to construct arbitrary, two- and three-dimensional shapes.