Biopolymers such as nucleic acids and proteins encode biological data and may be viewed as strings of chemical letters. While electronic computers manipulate strings of 0’s and 1’s encoded in electric signals, biologically encoded data might, in principle, be manipulated by biochemical means. During the last decade, several approaches to compute with biomolecules were developed, and the field h...

One major challenge in nanotechnology is to transport a nano-scale object from one location to another on a nano-structure. Molecular walkers are nano-machines designed for this task they are structures that can attach and move on some substrate. There have been several preliminary experiments for DNA walkers. However, none of these walker designs are “programmable”. These walkers either requir...

In this review we chart recent advances in what is at once an old and very new field of endeavour--the achievement of control of motion at the molecular level including solid-state and surface-mounted rotors, and its natural progression to the development of synthetic molecular machines. Besides a discussion of design principles used to control linear and rotary motion in such molecular systems...

The suggestion to start this Thematic Series was first made at the symposium held on September 16–18, 2014 in Potsdam, Germany, under the same title, “Molecular Machines and Devices.” The format of this Beilstein Nanotechnology Symposium is intended to bring a relatively small group of specialists together for a few days to discuss progress and open challenges. The range of topics is chosen suc...

The term ‘molecular machines’ has become popular during the past few years. In a seminal article in the journal Cell entitled ‘The cell as a collection of protein machines: preparing the next generation of molecular biologists’, Bruce Alberts described his excitement for these, I quote, ‘ingenious, elegant, marvelous’ protein assemblies, for ‘the sophistication of these remarkable devices’ (Alb...