Several companies are already seeking to take advantage of the new field, called synthetic biology, which combines chemistry, computer science, molecular biology, genetics and cell biology to breed industrial life forms that can secrete fuels, vaccines or other commercial products.

WSJ: Scientists Create First Synthetic Cell

"As we approach the ultimate limits of Moore's Law, however, silicon will have to be replaced in order to miniaturize further, " said Jeffrey Bokor, deputy director for science at the Molecular Foundry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor at UC-Berkeley.

ENGADGET: Stanford engineers find work around for barriers to carbon nanotube computers

Spanish chef Ferran Adria, the man behind the late, lamented elBulli restaurant, is bringing an exhibition dedicated to the art and science of his distinctive brand of molecular gastronomy to London.

NPR: Ferran Adria Brings ElBulli Exhibition To London

Medicine is essentially starting to move from the traditional guesswork format to a science based on understanding and modeling the molecular behavior of the organic world.

FORBES: Can Science Eliminate Disease?

"The experiments are very similar, " said George Church, a molecular geneticist at Harvard and senior researcher for the project reported in Science.

WSJ: Scientists Store King Speech, Shakespeare Sonnets in DNA

Simon Best, former head of plant science at Zeneca, looks forward to the day when molecular switches might be so sophisticated that the process of infection or drought will itself be enough to turn on a genetically engineered resistance gene.

ECONOMIST: Terminator genes

Reinvestigating techniques of old Soviet culinary science is one of the whimsies of Anatoly Komm, the Russian molecular chef who joined the San Pelligrino Top 50 Restaurant list in 2011.

FORBES: The Real Russian Revolution: On the Moscow Dinner-plate

Nanotechnology is the science of the very small, where machines and materials are built at the molecular level, and key components are measured in nanometers, or one-billionth of a meter.

CNN: Phones will soon be able to smell