The word “nanomachine” simply means a tiny machine. How tiny? Nano, as in nanometer, means 109 meters, or a billionth of a meter. To understand how small that is, let’s start with a rough distance from the tip of your outstretched arm to your nose. Cut that distance into 1,000 slices, and you have a millimeter, or 103 meters. That’s roughly the thickness of the period at the end of this sentence. Cut the period up into 1,000 slices, and each of those slices is a micrometer thick, or 104 meters. Some of the smallest living cells measure one micrometer across. Now slice that one-micrometer cell into 1,000 pieces. One of those slices is a nanometer, or 109 meters, thick. This is the size of some of the largest molecules. For example, the threadlike DNA is a very long double-stranded molecule two nanometers thick. So the word “nanomachine” refers to molecular-sized machines rather than cell-sized devices.
A good example of a nanomachine is an enzyme that performs a single function such as the enzyme maltase. Maltase is a large protein several nanometers in diameter with a single job of hydrolyzing maltose, a disaccharide found in grains. Think of cutting by adding water-that’s what hydrolyzing means. Cutting maltose produces molecules of glucose. Maltase is a membrane-bound enzyme found in the tips of the villi of the small intestines. One molecule of maltase can perform thousands of operations per second. Do you see why we call it a nanomachine? It snips much faster than we can with scissors. .
Every cell requires literally thousands of nanomachines to perform its daily functions. Each of the tiny machines does very specific jobs. The job of maltase is cutting. Some of the machines put things together or move things from one place to another. One recent scientific paper I read claimed that there are more than 100 machines whose only job is to do cell division. There is no question in my mind that they are the handiwork of a very smart Inventor. We need make no apology whatsoever for believing in a Creator. After all, He said that He made everything. Makes sense to me.