The amount of information trafficking internet nowadays is enormous and will increase further in the near future. It can be expected that in the next decennia the current technologies to store and process data will no longer suffice and that other strategies to handle information will have to be developed. One approach is to explore chemical routes, which nature has also followed during evolution: our brain can store and handle very large amounts of data and process them in a way silicon-based computers cannot do. Although brain-like chemical computers are still far beyond reach, it is of interest to explore how atom and molecule-based systems that can write, read, and store information might be designed and constructed.

In this lecture I will discuss our efforts to develop a new technology to write, store, and read information, i.e. on a single polymer chain with the help of “molecular machines” that are inspired by the hypothetical device (Turing machine) proposed by the British mathematician Alan Turing in 1936 as the general basis for the operation of a computer. We are following two approaches. In the first one we try to construct molecular machines based on clamp-shaped proteins, modified with porphyrin catalysts, that can bind to DNA and move along it while modifying the DNA chain in a controlled fashion. In the second approach we use synthetic machines that are derived from chiral porphyrin cages, which bind to synthetic polymers (e.g. polybutadiene) and glide along it while encoding it with chiral epoxide functions, i.e. (R,R)-epoxide (symbol 0) and (S,S)-epoxide (symbol 1). This encoding process, which is in progress, will be controlled by light.