ANDRZEJ KRAUZEWatching Broadway celebrate itself several weeks ago at the Tony Awards ceremony left me idly asking myself: If you were a theater critic awarding a Tony for lifetime achievement as a macromolecule and the nominees were DNA, RNA, and protein, which would you vote for?
For decades (more like centuries), proteins reaped the lion’s share of awards. Then, in the middle of the 20th century, DNA stole the limelight. Biological impresarios Watson and Crick introduced its structure with a tongue-in-cheek understatement in their seminal 1953 Nature paper: “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” That base pairing blew directors away at auditions, and the elegant and functional helical design brought down the house whenever DNA made an appearance on stage.
Putting that elegant structure to other uses has not escaped the notice of researchers who want to construct unique DNA edifices that have nothing to do with passing on genes. “Building Nanoscale Structures with ...
