Lasers are increasingly proving to be an enabling approach to process biomaterials and biological components on the nanometer length scale. While nanotechnology encompasses an array of enabling technologies that utilize the fact that matter at length scales less than 100 nanometers have distinctly different physical and chemical properties than the same matter at larger length scales, biology and biological components are a special subset since the fundamental building blocks are almost all less than 100 nanometers in size, i.e., biological molecules are constantly being used in a directed self-assembly manner to communicate and build new materials. There are already several successful examples of nanotechnology starting from the somewhat mundane sharper scalpels and protective sunscreens, to more effective drug delivery, and even biomolecular motors, gene therapeutics, tissue engineering and improved medical diagnostics. The unique capabilities of laser processing for these applications is based on tuning the laser-material interaction to create novel structures, i.e., the laser wavelength, pulse width and power can be varied over a wide range as can the composition and state of the material. This presentation will summarize several successful examples of the laser processing of biomaterials and biological components.