The 11/12/98 issue of _The Guardian_ made the following statement in an article dealing with the Foresight Institute:
"It seems researchers can `grow' a biological motor. Shahid Khan and Renate Lux of New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine will tell the Foresight conference they have found the blueprint for the motor which drives the tail of the E. Coli bacterium in just four of the bacterium's genes. E. Coli's helical tail works like a screw propellor, rotating from the base. The researchers have cloned a copy of the tail using these four genes; an electron microscope shows the protein structure in the base is exactly the same as the original, which means it should function normally."
This appears to give further credence to the position that if nature can create functional components at the nm scale, so can we.
Doug Bailey
doug.bailey@ey.com
nanotech@cwix.com