Nano-Gold

Gold does have some industrial uses, but the use to which a new technique developed by American scientists have put won't consume much. As reported by CNET's blog, a nanomachine made up of DNA can produce eight different kinds of nanoparticle containing gold.

"We have the three robot stations lined up in a row, and the walker walks by them. Depending on how we program the system, the walker will or will not accept cargos from the three stations," Seemen told Nature Podcast. "This is very analogous, in my mind, to the way the chassis of a car rolls by the various robots in an automobile assembly line."

The research takes advantage of DNA's unique ability to store information, which the team manipulated to adjust the structure of the molecular robots and how they connect to other molecules. Adding DNA strands to the walker and the forklifts allows them to move....

It's only done in experimental scale, and its eventual use is likely to be assembling gold nanocompounds for medical use. Once these molecular machines can self-assemble, though, there's going to be macro uses for them.

Imagine real gold thread, laced seamlessly into a shirt. Imagine gold laced seamlessly into thread. Gold jewelry that's not only custom made, but also custom redesigned without any loss of the gold....