Bio-Nanorobotics: A Field Inspired by Nature - Biomimetics: Biologically Inspired Technologies - page 221

ents) will determine which material it binds to and to which it does not. Hence such systems will
only interact with certain intrinsic materials.
In the process of this growth, a realignment of the intrinsic material occurs. As the addition of
further intrinsic material takes place, the whole system tries to realign itself towards the most stable
state and in the fastest possible time. This realignment goes on with the self-filtering process. If at
any incremental stage system does not find the kind and type of material it is looking for, it does not
realign and rejects that particular material and does not grow. By rejection, it might imply that
either the system does not align with the material or marks it as an unstable configuration and seeks
for the opportunity to replace it immediately. Hence it acts as a self-healer.

7.4.4 Self-Replication — A Thought Experiment

Let us try to replicate a system, based on the above properties. Consider a system A, consisting of
some intrinsic materials (Figure 7.15). The system A is completely defined by the way these
intrinsic materials are associated and aligned within it. According to the above properties of self-
replicating mechanisms, it is observed that the intrinsic materials of the system could be broken
down into further fundamental intrinsic materials.
Any stable configuration of the individual intrinsic material is in sync with the property of self-
balancing. Now when a particular intrinsic material (say 1) gets in an interactive distance of another
intrinsic material (say 2), then these two intrinsic materials try to form another subsystem A1 within
the super system A, following the property of self-balancing. These two intrinsic materials com-
bined will have some other function of intrinsic energy gradient and could be the sum of the
individual intrinsic energy gradients of the intrinsic materials and the applied external fields.
Now this argument could be extended to the situation when the third intrinsic material (say 3)
comes into the picture. This intrinsic material 3 would not only interact with intrinsic material 1 but
also with intrinsic material 2. Finally, a system A comes into generation, because of self-balancing
acts of these three intrinsic materials. The configuration they achieve becomes highly stable for that
particular situation. Now let us introduce more energy to the system A. It would be in the form of
introducing intrinsic materials or applying external gradients to the system A or both. Figure 7.16
explains the concept.

Intrinsic Material 1

Intrinsic Material 2

Intrinsic Material 3

System A

Figure 7.15 System of intrinsic materials — a self-replicative system A.