Origins of life: a route to nanotechnology

The origins of life and nanotechnology are two seemingly disparate areas of scientific investigation. However, the fundamental questions of life's beg innings and the applied construction of a Drexlerian nanotechnology both sh are a similar problem; how did and how can self-reproducing molecular machi nes originate? Here we draw attention to the coincidence between nanotechno logy and origins research with particular attention paid to the spontaneous adsorption and scanning tunneling rnicroscopy investigation of purine and pyrimidine bases self-organized into monolayers, adsorbed to the surfaces o f crystalline solids. These molecules which encode biological information i n nucleic acids, can form supramolecular architectures exhibiting enantiomo rphism with the complexity to store and encode putative protobiological inf ormation. We conclude that the application of nanotechnology to the investi gation of life's origins, and vice versa, could provide a viable route to a n evolution-driven synthetic life. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. A ll rights reserved.