NANO IN LIFE SCIENCE

This is the area where nanotech has been most severely hyped, as a technology that will cure cancer, eliminate infections, enhance our intelligence and make us immortal. It is also the area where the bounds of nanotechnology are most blurred. This is because nature’s technology operates predominantly at the nanoscale. However our knowledge of the chemical structure of DNA and the proteins it codes for, and of the cellular machinery used to assemble the proteins, has for many years been classified under more traditional labels. But blurring of the boundaries is inevitable as we extend our senses and our ability to manipulate the world in this realm.