The world is changing. Everywhere around us looks different than it used to and many changes still take place with each passing day. If there is one thing that is constant, though, it is us humans. Our presence in the world is one of the constant things here aside from death and taxes. Yet even us are evolving. We became more complacent and tech-dependent. We rarely move around because we can’t think of anything better to do than to tinker with our smartphones in the comfort of our couch or bed. It’s the new vice most people have and it truly is addicting.
No wonder human health is deteriorating. More and more people get diagnosed with chronic and debilitating conditions. Even cancer is widespread already. Blame it on our unhealthy lifestyle or perhaps poor choices in just about everything. While technology has proved to be disastrous for us in a sense that we got lazy and thus made us prone to sickness, it now offers a solution to our health woes – nanobots. If you are a fan of cartoons, you’ve probably heard about this before as this was featured in the animated movie – The Big Hero 6 – featuring the lovable Baymax.
With recent success in robotics, the day isn’t away when we shall be surrounded by numerous robots to help us with our day to day routine and make life easier for us. With an aim to build a team of robots that work together individually to accomplish a task, researchers at Caltech University have come up with a simple but interesting robot made out entirely of DNA which is capable enough to walk, sort and lift molecules.
These robots have been programmed to recognize and transport molecules from one point to another. Pertaining to this quality, these robots can be used in future for medical applications, specifically deliver medicine to a specific cell or build nano devices that can treat ailments from inside the body itself.
The study was published in the journal Science stating that the DNA robots look similar to a drunken work which has hands and legs to walk and lift molecules.
They’re not entirely robots though as these nanobots are comprised of DNA nucleotides that are designed to work like miniature robots. They’ll be able to perform mechanical tasks like the loading of the cargo (drug) and then deliver it to parts of the body that are usually inaccessible such as the bloodstream. Despite their simple structure, these robots are actually quite handy and they may even be upgraded in the future to help them do more complex tasks.
Lead scientist Dr Lulu Qian, from the California Institute of Technology, said: ‘Just like electromechanical robots are sent off to faraway places, like Mars, we would like to send molecular robots to minuscule places where humans can’t go, such as the bloodstream.
‘Our goal was to design and build a molecular robot that could perform a sophisticated nanomechanical task: cargo sorting.’
The nanobot, described in the journal Science, was constructed from three basic building blocks to provide ‘feet’ for walking, an ‘arm’ and ‘hand’ for picking up objects, and a segment that can recognise a specific drop-off point and trigger the release of the cargo.
Nanobots are helpful in a variety of things as they are really tiny that you can make them do even the most impossible of things but they are also capable of doing great things when grouped together. Researchers have been looking up ways how to maximize this technology and it seems they are in a “Eureka” moment right now. To ensure that patients get well from whatever conditions they are suffering from, nanobots will be used to deliver medicine to the exact spot inside your body where it is needed the most. No more drug lost in the system or get flushed by the liver. You will get exactly what you need at the actual site of infection, inflammation, or abnormality For a while, these tiny robots will give hope to mankind that has been suffering from diseases through the years that seems to be impossible to cure.
