Nanoscale "robots" made of DNA that rapidly self-replicate could be harnessed to manufacture drugs or other chemicals inside the body, say researchers. Feng Zhou at New York University and his colleagues created the tiny machines, which are just 100 nanometres across, using four strands of DNA. The nanorobots are held in a solution with these DNA-strand raw materials, which they arrange into copies of themselves one at a time by using their own structure as a scaffold. The team didn't respond to a request for comment, but say in their paper that their nanobots are capable of exponential reproduction. Andrew Surman at King's College London, who wasn't involved in the research, says that the nanobots are a step forward in creating machines from DNA that could manufacture drugs or chemicals, or even act as rudimentary robots or computers.

What if there was a magical robot that could cure any disease? Everyone knows there's no one machine that could do that. But maybe a swarm made up of tens of thousands of tiny autonomous micro-bots could? That's the premise laid out by proponents of nanobot medical technology. In science fiction, the big idea usually involves creating tiny metal robots via some sort of magic-adjacent miniaturization technology.

Doctors know that we need smarter medicines to target the bad guys only. One hope is that tiny robots on the scale of a billionth of a metre can come to the rescue, delivering drugs directly to rogue cancer cells. To make these nanorobots, researchers in Europe are turning to the basic building blocks of life – DNA. Today robots come in all shapes and sizes. One of the strongest industrial robots can lift cars weighing over two tons.

Scientists have built and tested a walking robot that can pick up and carry objects but is too small to be seen with the naked eye. The machine is made from DNA, the molecule that carries the'book of life' genetic instructions for all living things. In future, similar nanobots could be used to assemble new chemicals and materials at the molecular level, build incredibly miniaturised circuit boards, or roam through blood vessels delivering medicines. Shown here is a conceptual illustration of a DNA robot sorting two types of cargos. The machine is made from DNA, the molecule that carries the'book of life' genetic instructions for all living things Nanobots are devices made from DNA that are so small they can be injected into the human bloodstream. The nanobot described in the journal was made with a few nucleotides, sub-unit elements of DNA.