Mid-Term Report Summary - MRECB (Molecular Robots Exhibiting Collective Behaviours)
Project MRECB focuses on the design, study, and implementation of nanoscale robots fabricated from DNA molecules and programmed using DNA molecules. These robots will be capable of displaying collective behaviours and swarm intelligence, in order to carry out complex medical tasks such as logical control of drug action and surgical procedures performed autonomously and at molecular precision. Programming these robots will be carried out in an equivalent way to that of conventional computers. During the first half of the project we successfully created molecular robots capable of universal computation for biological control, quorum sensing, flocking, foraging, and more. Abstract rules taken from the field of robotics - namely, Asimov’s laws of robotics - have been implemented in these robots as well. We also demonstrated remote control of these robots in an animal using thought. We have shown that these robots are non-immunogenic and safe in animals, and can be synthesised in large scale using building materials other than DNA. Our next aim is to demonstrate the efficacy of robots programmed to eliminate a specific type of disease in an animal model.