Disclosed herein are nanorod productions systems (NPS) useful for the production of biological scalable functionalization-ready nanorods (BSFnano). The nanorods produced are derived from filamentous phage Ff (f1, M13 or fd). The NPS disclosed herein permits efficient biological production of non-infectious, heat-stable isomorphic proteinaceous nanorods comprising modifications allowing site-specific recombinant, chemical and enzymatic attachment of peptide and non-peptide functionalities in an orthogonal manner. Also disclosed are methods of making and using these nanorods, such as in methods of detecting target molecules.