Researchers have demonstrated a programmable nanoscale robot made from several strands of DNA that can grab onto other DNA segments and combine them to create new UV-welded nanomachines - including replicas of itself. According to New Scientist, the robots can be built using just four strands of DNA and are just 100 nanometers in diameter, so about a thousand robots could squeeze into a line the width of a human hair.
The research team from New York University, Ningbo Cixi Institute of Biomedical Engineering, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences said these robots surpass previous robots that could only assemble fragments into two-dimensional shapes. The new robot is able to use "multi-axis precise folding and positioning" to "enter three-dimensional space and gain more degrees of freedom."
These nanobots are often seen as a potential way to make drugs, enzymes and other chemicals, potentially within human cells. But the researchers specifically note that these machines can "self-replicate their entire three-dimensional structure and function."
They're not completely independent; the robots, while "programmable," operate under externally controlled temperatures and UV light, which they need to "weld" the DNA segments they're assembling together.
At this point, another obstacle standing between humans and the Great Gray Goo apocalypse is that they can't copy themselves, or even anything else, without enough of the exact DNA segments they need.
Still, it's pretty mind-boggling stuff, and it opens our eyes to the possibilities of a future that's rushing toward us at breakneck speed.