Credit: Caitlin Monney
Lauzon and Vallée-Bélisle found that the function of molecular nanomachines can efficiently evolve by breaking them into multiple components. The image illustrates how the fabrication of nanomachines using one green component (top) leads to a simple functional unit while the fabrication of similar nanomachines using three components (blue, orange and green) allows creating functional units with novel regulation properties (e.g., more or less sensitive -i.e. cooperative or anti-cooperative- and a timer function).