Design principles for functional nanomachines: if biology can do it, why can't we?

Experimental platforms for assembling nanostructures out of programmable building blocks are developing at an increasingly rapid pace. Nevertheless, our ability to create functional nanomachines and nanodevices pales in comparison to the “high-tech nanotechnology” found throughout biology. I will address two key theoretical hurtles. First, what physical principles will allow us to dramatically increase the complexity, sophistication, and precision of self-assembled nanostructures in practice? I will discuss recent progress focused on a particularly powerful and economical regime of programmable self-assembly, where a high-dimensional polyhedral structure dictates what can be assembled and what cannot, giving a single, simultaneous view of the entire design space. Then, I will discuss the gap between designing a static nanostructure and achieving a function nanomachine. What physical mechanisms will enable synthetic nanostructures to perform a desired task? I will present a mechanism where bistable “C-shaped” structures can exchange energy, similar to ATP hydrolysis, and discuss how this could be realized in practice.