84
Nanomedicine 
but complete digestion and excretion of the bugs remains can 
take an hour or longer.
But the first thing a microbivore has to do is reliably acquire 
a pathogen to be digested. If the correct bacterium bumps 
into  the  nanorobot  surface,  reversible  binding  sites  on  the 
microbivore hull can recognize and weakly bind to the bacte-
rium. A set of 9 different antigenic markers should be specific 
enough, since all 9 must register a positive binding event to 
confirm that a targeted microbe has been caught. There are 
20,000  copies  of  these  9-marker  receptor  sets,  distributed 
in  275  disk-shaped  regions  across  the  microbivore  surface. 
Inside the receptor ring are more rotors to absorb glucose and 
oxygen from the bloodstream for nanorobot power. At the 
center of each receptor disk is a grapple silo; each disk is 150 
nanometers in diameter.
Once  a  bacterium  has  been  captured  by  the  reversible 
receptors, telescoping grapples rise up out of the microbivore 
surface and attach to the trapped bacterium. The microbi-
vore grapples are modeled after a watertight manipulator arm 
originally designed by Drexler [17] for nanoscale manufactur-
ing. This arm is about 100 nanometers long and has various 
rotating and telescoping joints that allow it to change its posi-
tion, angle, and length. But the microbivore grapples need 
a greater reach and range of motion, so they are longer and 
more complex, with many additional joints. After rising out of 
its silo, a grapple arm can execute complex twisting motions, 
and adjacent grapple arms can physically reach each other, 
allowing them to hand off bound objects as small as a virus 
particle. Grapple handoff motions can transport a large rod-
shaped bacterium from its original capture site forward into 
the mouth of the microbivore device. The bug is rotated into 
the proper orientation as it approaches the open mouth.