A Systematic Approach to Nanotechnology Based on a Small Set of Molecular Building Blocks

A small set of molecular building blocks will allow the implementation of “universally programmable intelligent matter,” that is, matter whose structure, properties, and behavior can be programmed, quite literally, at the molecular level. The approach is based on combinatory logic, a term-rewriting or graphsubstitution system, which can be interpreted as an abstract model of molecular processes. In such systems there are small sets of substitution operations (reactions) that are universal in the sense that they can be used to program any Turing-computable function. Although these operations provide the building blocks for univerally programmable intelligent matter, there are many issues that arise in the context of molecular computation, which we address.