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The World's Smallest Robots

Harold Morowitz
Robinson Professors and Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study
George Mason University

The Robotics Institute of America defines a robot as a “re-programmable multifunctional manipulator designed to move materials, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks.”  Transition metals and metal ions of the fourth row have between one and ten electrons in d orbitals.
This can lead to between one and nine ligands attached to the metals ions. These ligands are generally the core groups of metabolism and can react with the metal orbitals with covalent, ionic and coordinate bonds. The ligands sense the environment by pH, redox potential, and hydrogen bonds and Van der Waals interactions. The ligands are capable of interacting by redox reactions and general acid base catalysis. Transition metal ions are Lewis acids. Thus the ligand-metal complex senses the environment, performs a task and can be reprogrammed by appropriate reactions affecting the number and configuration of d orbital electrons. The biologically most significant transition elements go from vanadium to zinc. These sub nano robots provide for pre-macromolecular catalysis and were likely involved in the origin of metabolism.

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