Researchers at universities in New York and Ningbo, China, say they have created tiny robots built from DNA that can reproduce themselves.
Such nanorobots could one day launch search-and-destroy missions against cancer cells within a human's bloodstream without the need for surgery or collect toxic waste from the ocean.
The tiny mechanism is so small that 1,000 of them could fit into the width of a sheet of paper.
"Nanoscale industrial robots have potential as manufacturing platforms and are capable of automatically performing repetitive tasks to handle and produce nanomaterials with consistent precision and accuracy," said Feng Zhou, a lead researcher on the project and staff member at New York University's Department of Physics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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