As much as the hype goes for crispr technique it's simply an enzyme with a molecular scissor that is able to indentify a correct strand of DNA. Now if we can replace it with nanorobotics it could do the same task with possibly higher precision. But at this stage of nanorobotics it seems we are still at an early stage, or that we can borrow the ideas from somewhere. What do you guys think and how much progress have we made on nanorobotics?

 

P.S. You might be able to program and control the robotics wirelessly

Edited April 28, 20169 yr by fredreload

I doubt nanobots are as well developed as robots, which are inept compared overall to a human. Computer controlled machine tools (CCMT) are useful and in special cases do better than people. As an analogy, current CCMT are like cellphones when they were the size of a brick. Improvements are rapid.

So there is a distinction, sounds great!

Inventions are a continuum. If technology started in the stone age, a few years later we build robots. There are many steps between, a few setbacks, a lot of cussing, and some celebrations.

So far nanorobots have been little mire than advanced nanoparticles usually with a few functional elements. But far from what most would associate with actual robots. As such, the term is rather misleading (as posts even on this forum demonstrate). You can, in theory, add DNA to these nanoparticles to let them identify cognate DNA. However, I do not think that there are really advanced applications out there yet, and certainly not on the level of complex enzymatic systems such as CRISPR. In fact, pretty much nothing developed in the areas has approached the complexity, specificity and efficiency of enzymatic complexes, which is why we still use them for molecular biological research and applications.