Computer designed networks of hydrogen bonds allow programming specific interactions of protein interfaces, facilitating programming molecular recognition.
UPDATE 2.0 Dear friends of Foresight, Historically our Update has mainly featured Nanotech News. Now that so many events and announcements are coming thick and fast, we feel like it’s time to update the update — this issue will focus on new events to bring our readers up-to-date, but the next update will probably look… Continue reading October 13 Update
Chains of monomers joined by non-biological peptoid bonds follow different rules of self-assembly and form structures not found in chains joined by the peptide bonds used to form proteins.
Designing and building spiroligomers, robust building blocks of various 3D shapes made from unnatural amino acids, decorated with various functional groups, and linked rigidly together by pairs of bonds, and a new approach to nanotechnology design software.
A porous metal-organic framework ‘host’ soaks up molecular ‘guests’ to form a crystalline complex, the structure of which can be determined by X-ray crystallography, providing atomic-resolution structures of minute amounts of guest molecules, and perhaps eventually other nanostructures.
The demonstration that the process of DNA replication is more flexible than thought should make it easier to incorporate unusual amino acids into designed proteins, which might make it easier to design novel protein machines.
