The age of nanotechnology assisted medical care is now on the horizon thanks to work on molecular motors by Dutch researchers.   

Ben Feringa and colleagues from the University of Groningen report a new synthetic molecular motor that converts chemical energy to kinetic energy. The microscale motor is a significant advancement in the development of nanomachines as it spins and moves independently.   

Similar to a car towing a caravan, chemical motors use a catalyst to pull along an object attached to it. Feringa and his team followed this principle and, without affecting the activity of the catalyst, tethered microparticles to a synthetic catalase mimic.   

They overcame the problem of providing the system with fuel by using the catalyst to convert a supply of hydrogen peroxide to molecular oxygen, which upon conversion caused movement.   

Molecular motors have been around for billions of years and are fundamental to life, controlling a huge variety of functions in living cells, many of which we are only just beginning to understand.   

Researchers in this area hope to create working molecular machines - nanodevices potentially capable of imitating some of the most sensitive processes that occur in living cells. 'Molecular motors will be at the heart of nanoscale machinery of the future,' explains Feringa.   

However, scientists are still faced with several challenges before this goal can become reality. 'The major challenge is to demonstrate similar motion at the nanometre scale,' he admits. Although their model uses micro rather than nanosized particles, this work brings scientists a few steps closer to finding the solution. Katie Gibb