Nanobot replacing a neuron - www.youtube.com...
The other Industry, which I believe will benefit best from nanotechnology, is the healthcare system, and most importantly, YOUR body. Nanotech has a lot of exciting technology in store for us.
Nature shows that molecules can serve as machines cause living things work by means of such machinery. Enzymes are molecular machines that make, break, and rearrange the bonds holding other molecules together. Muscles are driven by molecular machines that haul fiber past one another. DNA serves as a data-storage system, transmitting digital instructions to molecular machines. The ribosomes, that manufacture protein molecules. And these protein molecules, in turn, make up most of the molecular machinery.- Drexler
Bionic Chip Merges Living Biological Cell With Electronic Circuitry
berkeley.edu...
University researchers have invented what they believe is the first "bionic chip" -- part living tissue, part machine -- in which a biological cell is part of the actual electronic circuitry. The new chip gives scientists something they long have sought: an "open sesame" tool to get safely inside fragile, living cells at the touch of a button.
www.theregister.co.uk...
Growing Neurons on computer chips - www.youtube.com...
Miniature robotic surgeons
www.newscientist.com... Less invasive and better able to deal with internal injuries.
Nano-particles for the delivery of genes and drugs to human cell
www.scienceblog.com...
www.nanomedicine.com...
A much more efficient and quicker directed method for delivering compounds to cells.
A living molecular motor with a fabrication device
www.news.cornell.edu...
This represents a merger of a real human cell with a nano-fabrication device, attached. Such machines could travel through the body, functioning as mobile pharmacies, for example, dispensing precise doses of chemotherapy drugs exclusively to cancer cells.
Redesigning the human cell
Here's a conceptually simple proposal to overcome all biological pathogens. With the advent of full-scale nanotechnology in the 2020s we will have the potential to replace biology's genetic-information repository in the cell nucleus with a nano-engineered system that would maintain the genetic code and simulate the actions of RNA, the ribosome, and other elements of the computer in biology's assembler. A nano-computer would maintain the genetic code and implement the gene-expression algorithms. A nanobot would then construct the amino-acid sequences for the expressed genes.
- Ray Kurweil
There have also been designs put forth for improving the many different types of cells that make the human body run.
Artificial red blood cell
foresight.org...
The artificial red blood cell or "respirocyte" proposed here is a spherical 1-micron size diamonoid with active pumping powered by endogenous glucose. Due to it ability with withstand a pressure of about 10 atmospheres it is able to deliver 236 times more oxygen to the tissues per unit volume than natural red cells. It also will be able to manage carbonic acidity with an onboard computer and numerous chemical and pressure sensors enable complex device
Artificial platelets
www.imm.org...
The artificial mechanical platelet or clottocyte of the future could be 100-1000 of times faster and more efficient that biological ones. Conceived as a oxyglucose-powered spherical nano-robot 2 microns in diameter, it contains a fiber mesh that is compactly folded onboard. Upon command, the device unfurls its mesh packet in the immediate vicinity of an injured blood vessel. Soluble thin films coating certain parts of the mesh dissolve upon contact with plasma water, revealing sticky sections in desired patterns.
Artificial phagocytes
www.rfreitas.com...
A theoretical artificial mechanical phagocytes of microscopic size, called a "microbivore. Its primary function is to destroy microbiological pathogens found in the human bloodstream. The microbivore is a spheroidal nano-medical device measuring 3.4 microns in diameter. Microbivores will be up to 1000 times faster-acting than biological defenses. They would also be about 80 times more efficient than macrophages, in terms of volume/sec digested per unit volume.
www.youtube.com...
[edit on 12/6/2009 by VonDoomen]
well researched and informative, IMO nanotech is the way forward for many aspects of human evolution, but like so many human
inventions there can also be a negative side to this technology or the dark side as some scientists call it, the military have a big interest
in this Tec, and it’s not hard to understand why, manipulating, controlling and manufacturing machines at the molecular level has an extraordinary
power of control, I’ve looked into Smart dust in the past as a passing interest through my previous job (I worked as a lab technician in the
telecommunications industry in a wafer fab) and this technology can be used for many applications such as monitoring applications, detecting cancers
in the human body through to communicating with computers, there’s a good article on that hear. 
