>Actually, things must be a little more complex - All the cilia on the
>bacterium will be rotating in one direction at a given time, but that
>direction can be changed rapidly by some form of molecular switch. This
>is the basis of how bacteria (or E. coli, at least) control the direction
>of movement.
>I feel this system is probably quite a good example to take for out
>initial experiments in Nanotech. It is an obviously mechanical device
>which works on a versy small scale. If you look at the structures of the
>various components, it has wheels, bearings, etc.
I would also like to see experiments in adapting bacterial motors for use in nanotechnology. I've actually seen quite a few papers over the past few years on portions of related systems, notably dynesin (sp?) bound to microtubules. One modification that I would very much like to see is some method of single-stepping the motors, perhaps with a sequence of substrates that bind reversibly to various conformations of the motor molecules. We need something like that in order to do molecularly precise work with the motors. A more-or-less constant rate of motion, controlled by concentration, may be fine for a cell, but it doesn't let us do predictable positioning.
-Jeffrey Soreff
standard disclaimer: I do not speak for my employer