Wikimedia Commons, M Strong et al.Advances in nanotechnology are paving the way for a variety of “intelligent” nano-devices, from those that seek out and kill cancer cells to microscopic robots that build designer drugs. In the push to create such nano-sized devices, researchers have come to rely on DNA. With just a few bases, DNA may not have the complexity of amino acid-based proteins, but some scientists find this minimalism appealing.
“The rules that govern DNA’s interactions are simple and easy to control,” explained Andrew Turberfield, a nanoscientist at the University of Oxford. “A pairs with T, and C pairs with G, and that’s basically it.” The limited options make DNA-based nanomachines more straightforward to design than protein-based alternatives, he noted, yet they could serve many of the same functions. Indeed, the last decade has seen the development of a dizzying array of DNA-based nanomachines, including DNA walkers, computers, and biosensors.
Furthermore, like protein-based machines, the new technologies rely on the same building blocks that cells use. As such, DNA machines “piggyback on natural cellular processes and work happily with the cell,” said Timothy Lu, a synthetic biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), allowing ...
