It is a thought about possibility that in the future, nanobots will be capable of manipulating matter at the atomic level to create just about any type of resource we could ever want to mass produce as long as the constituent atoms are available. This is an extraordinary possibility that would make the “Star Trek” dream of a replicator a complete reality and allow the general population to have machines that could pop out anything you desire on demand.
However, while nanobots have enormous potential on the horizon for manipulating matter and allowing us to create all we can imagine, a nearer possibility for the manipulation of matter on the atomic level. This technology has existed for nearly 4.5 billion years if you believe modern day theories about the earliest existence of this amazing machinery.
The cell is the basic unit of life and it is what makes our existence possible. Without it, we would not exist to create the modern technology or even to imagine these fantastical science fiction concepts dreamed up by futurists and sci-fi authors such as myself. However, the cell does so much more than act as the building block of life. Single celled organisms do much in this world from releasing gases into the atmosphere to breaking down matter and reorganizing it on a molecular level to serve life in a number of ways within the confines of the plasma membranes that protect them from the hazards of the outside world.
Wait a minute, did I just say cells break down matter and reorganize the molecules?
Indeed, they very frequently take many numbers of resources such as methane and organic matter and convert them into more complex macro molecules like amino acids that make up the building blocks of protein. Cells also absorb many other resources that might be used in industry as well. For example, did you know that the average human male requires about 8.7 mg per day of iron for a healthy diet? This element is the very same metal used in the production of steel, one of the most common metals used in industry since the Industrial Revolution when Henry Bessemer invented the first process for manufacturing steel inexpensively.
Many other inorganic compounds are also taken in by many forms of life and used in some way, chemicals being excreted by cells when they are not useful.
How can we use this in the context of genetic engineering? Well, DNA, as many scientists have discovered in recent decades, is the programming language of nature. We have already begun the creation of GMOs and many other applications of genetic engineering are used in many applications from medicine to industrial use. Bacteria can be made to do cute things like glow in the dark or even more useful things like consuming oil to clean up hazardous environmental spills. How far can we take the programming of cells to create useful things we need or want?
The cellular assembler is just a primitive version of a molecular assembler that would be primarily used for the refinement of desired materials contained in certain ores or mineral deposits. The bacteria could be programmed to eat inorganic matter and actually separate specific chemicals out into a solution that could then be extracted through a simple distillation process after being dumped through a filter that is designed to catch the bacteria cells. That filter is similar to the ones found in a common water filter used by survivalists to get rid of harmful bacteria found in many natural water sources. The unwanted contaminants in the material eaten up by the engineered bacterium would be inside the membranes of the bacterial cells and the desired material to be refined would be all that was left in the water. After that, distillation would separate the water from the other material.
This idea is one of many possibilities that could be made a reality with genetic engineering. However, what if cells could be programmed to actually build and construct matter itself at the cellular level? Many prokaryotic cells are able to move around with the most primitive of navigation devices called a flagellum. The flagellum is a simple whip that allows a single celled organism to propel itself through a solution of liquid and perhaps represents one of the earliest forms of evolutionary prototyping that led to the development of the Animal Kingdom. What if we could engineer other devices into a cell that could manipulate matter at the molecular level to our will? For example, a more advanced cellular assembler could conceivably make use of a modified artificial flagellum to actually build matter into a specific pattern that will gradually build a structure. Cells already form animal bodies according to genetic algorithms found within stem cells, but single celled organisms may perhaps be programmed in the future to take inorganic matter and form that into larger structures according to a design formulated by human biologists.
Just some food for thought about how we might better and more quickly bring the dream of a molecular assembler into reality through the already accessible avenue of genetic engineering of bacterial cells.