Electron microscope image of nanostructuresYonggang KeDNA is often referred to as one of life’s building blocks. Now, researchers are taking that metaphor literally by making bricks out of the genetic material. A report published today (November 29) in Science describes the creation of short, single-strand DNA bricks that self-assemble into pre-designed nanoscale structures, such as geometric shapes, numbers and letters, smiley faces, and more.
“What we have provided is a very robust, simple and general technology for making arbitrary shapes on the nanometer scale with very precise control,” said lead author Peng Yin of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
“It's astounding work,” said Erik Winfree, director of the Molecular Programming Project at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, who was not involved in the work. “It demonstrates convincingly that rationally designed 3-D self-assembly can work better than I think anyone previously imagined.”
Nanotechnologists have been using DNA as a building material for many years, explained Kurt Gothelf, director of the Center for DNA Nanotechnology at Aarhus University in Denmark. “The beauty of using DNA is that it is so easy to predict its structure,” ...
