The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has exposed “unpopular” this year – it has been awarded to “Molecular Machines” in the category of “Purification”. Previous years, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to interdisciplinary subjects such as biology, physics, biochemistry and biophysics.

Professor Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg, France, Sir James Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern University, and the University of Groningen, the Netherlands Professor Bernard Feringa has won this Nobel Prize. They are awarded for their contributions to the design and synthesis of molecular machines.

In this field, China also has a world-leading standard. The research field of Tianhe Academic Research Team of East China University of Science and Technology is the “design and synthesis of molecular machines”. Winning the Nobel Prize in this field will help to commercialize applications as early as possible.

"swallow" a surgeon

"Molecular machine" is also called biological nano-machine. Its components are mainly biomolecules such as proteins. It has small size, diversity, self-adaptation, chemical energy or thermal energy drive, molecular adjustment and other artificial machines. The discovery of learning and the bionics are of great significance.

The "Molecular Machine" was proposed in 1959 as a concept of nanotechnology. Richard Feynman, a well-known physicist at the time, boldly predicted that the molecular machine will play a key role in the future of nano-robot surgery and positioning drugs in the human body. He said: "Although this idea sounds crazy, if people can swallow a surgeon, such an operation would be very interesting." He depicted that as long as the surgeon is placed in the blood of the human body, he can arrive. Heart, and see what went wrong, then he will take out a knife and cut off bad places, such as tumors.

Feynman's ideas were quickly reflected in a science fiction film. In 1966, the American film Fantastic Voyage described how a submarine fleet was shrunk and injected into a scientist's body to save his life by performing vascular surgery.

Today, 50 years later, although people still have not turned science fiction films into reality, Feynman’s predictions are still being tried by many people. Scientists hope that one day they will be able to transport chemotherapy drugs directly to the body's needs, kill tumor cells, and not harm good cells. However, the process of this proof is long. As Fraser Stoddart, who won one of the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, said: "This is not happening overnight. It takes a long time and the joint efforts of talented people."

In fact, in the 1950s and 1960s, scientists tried to connect chemical circular elements to create new molecules. However, until 1983, significant results were discovered. The French professor Sauvage successfully connected two cyclic molecules together to form a special chain, a bicyclic compound. Usually molecules are formed by covalent bonds between atoms through a shared pair of electrons, but in this chain, molecules are formed by more free mechanical interactions. In order for a machine to perform its tasks, it must be composed of components that can move relative to each other. The two interlocking circular molecules discovered by Professor Sauvage are relatively movable.

In 1991, Sir Stoddart successfully synthesized the rotaxane and achieved the second step of the molecular machine. Rotaxane is a type of interlocking supramolecular system formed by one ring molecule nested on another linear molecule.

Another winner, Professor Feringa from the Netherlands, invented the first molecular motor, which was seen as a landmark event in the molecular machine field. In 1999, he made a molecular rotor blade that was able to continue to rotate in one direction. Since then, he has designed a "molecular car."

In 2011, the first four-wheeled "nano car", the chassis and four wheels are made up of molecules. The four wheels can rotate in one direction and can be activated on one surface.

In 2013, a team led by David Leigh, a professor at the University of Manchester in the UK, created a nano-robot that could capture amino acids and connect them like ribose in human cells.

Although these findings are limited to laboratory demonstrations, researchers are tapping into the potential of this technology and predicting its ability to become an application that truly changes people's real lives. One of the most important application prospects is the automatic generation of molecular robots in living organisms. For example, a robot targeting a virus may combine its specific virus with its molecular forceps to transport drugs to the tumor site.

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