Soft nanomachinery
Usually this refer to molecular biology and nanotechnologies that aim to mimicking it i.e. synthetic biology. Following the synthetic biology pathway will not lead to advanced productive nanosystems of the kind that is in focus on this APM wiki here. Or rather contribute peripherally alongside an accidental path.
"Soft" in soft nanomachinery may also (but more rarely) refer to foldamer based nanotechnologies less or more beyond synthetic biology like e.g. structural DNA nanotechnology and de-novo protein engineering. Floppy chain molecules (and staple strand molecules) fold and self assemble. The resulting structures may still be quite soft and floppy. Though along the incremental path there is a focus on stiffness. Aiming for foldamer structures that are especially rigid and lead to more geometric shapes that can better be abstracted over. E.g. Think "protein lego". A big challenge here is termination control. While foldamers are softer than crystolecules, the ones along the incremental path are still harder/stiffer than what onedeals with n synthetic biology. The aim of the incremental path is to use soft nanotechnology to get to stiff nanotechnology (and thus more and more advanced materials) ASAP.
