Molecular 3D Printing

Explore methods for molecular-scale 3D printing, which would enable the precise assembly of molecules layer by layer.   This would in principle move us towards a general-purpose approach to atomically precise fabrication as envisioned by Drexler in the 1980s and Feynman in the late 1950s. DNA origami made a leap in 2006, but DNA is in some key ways a much less precise and versatile nanoscale building material than proteins/peptides. A promising path would extend “DNA origami” to “protein carpentry” by adapting Beta Solenoid proteins, or other modular protein components with programmable binding properties, as lego-like building blocks and then using the latter to construct massively parallel protein-based 3D printers for lego-like covalent assembly of a restricted set of chemical building blocks. This one is riskier: how programmably can we really control protein assembly, and could we bootstrap from initial crappy prototype protein-carpentry-and-or-DNA-origami-based molecular 3D printers to genuinely useful ones?  Safety consideration: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0957-4484/15/8/001  Strategy consideration: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-paretotopian-goal-alignment