BEIJING, March 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Japanese scientists have used carbon rings and hydrogen known as phenyl groups to create molecular-size scissors that are opened and closed with light. 

    The scissors -- perhaps the world's smallest -- are just three nanometers, or billionths of a meter, long. This makes them more than 100 times smaller than a wavelength of violet light.

    These miniscule clippers could help control genes, proteins and other molecules in the body, researchers said.

    The molecular cutting device researcher Takuzo Aida at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have designed has a pivot, handles and blades. The team presented their findings Monday at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Chicago.

    "This work is the first example where a molecular machine mechanically manipulates other molecules by light," Aida said in a prepared statement. "This work is an important step for the future development of molecular robotics."

    The scissor's pivot is a molecule dubbed chiral ferrocene, which essentially sandwiches a round iron atom between two carbon plates. The carbon plates can rotate freely around the iron atom.

    The handles are organic chemical structures dubbed phenylene groups. These are tied together with azobenzene, a molecule that reacts to light. Shining visible light on the scissors makes the azobenzene expand and drive the handles apart, closing the blades. Shining ultraviolet rays on the scissors has the opposite effect.

    The researchers say their scissors could help firmly grasp molecules like pincers and manipulate them, say by twisting them back and forth.

    The researchers are now working on larger scissors that researchers can manipulate remotely. Such clippers might find use in the body, operated using near-infrared light that "can reach deep parts of the body," said researcher Kazushi Kinbara at the University of Tokyo.

    (Agencies)