Nature Chemistry | News and Views

One never forgets the sheer excitement of an infant's first hesitant steps; the clumsy but undaunted efforts that you know will soon develop to the confident strides that will enable entry to the 'real world'. It is hard to avoid similar thoughts when one looks at the steps currently taken to achieve movement at the nanoscale. In a nano-world where thermal Brownian motion rules, finding movement is trivial but the question of control is not1, 2. It is particularly challenging to fuel molecules and nano-objects to induce directional translational and rotary motion3, 4, 5. Major leaps are certainly still necessary, but ultimately the design of molecular motors will enable the construction of nano-machinery and nano-robots and hold promise for applications as broad as sensing, drug delivery and out-of-equilibrium assembly systems.