Nano-machines can mimic muscle movement

French researchers say they've managed to assemble thousands of nano-machines capable of producing a coordinated movement like that of human muscle fibers. The researchers, led by Nicolas Giuseppone of the University of Strasbourg, said the experiment suggests a multitude of applications in robotics and in the medical field for the synthesis of artificial muscles or other materials. Human muscles are controlled by the coordinated movement of thousands of protein molecules -- biological "nano-machines" -- which only function individually over distances on the order of a nanometer. But when combined in their thousands, these molecules -- or the artificial nano-machines in the French experiment -- can amplify this linear movement until they reach human scale and do so in a perfectly coordinated manner, the researchers said. Giuseppone's team has reported synthesizing long polymer chains incorporating thousands of nano-machines each capable of producing linear telescopic motion of around one nanometer. Taken together, the whole polymer chain can contract or extend over about 10 micrometers, thereby amplifying the movement by a factor of 10,000, the researchers said.