Paul Rothemund at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena has created a way to use long strands of DNA coupled with smaller strands to create specific patterns. He even wrote a program that will take a shape as input and give which shorter strands of DNA are needed to produce the desired shape. Besides being pretty cool on its own, this could be used to create nanostructures and other electronic devices.
Mr. Rothemund writes:
” Lately, I have developed a method of creating nanoscale shapes and patterns using DNA. Each of the two smiley faces above, at right, are actually giant DNA complexes, imaged with an atomic force microscope. Each is about 100 nanometers across (1/1000th the width of a human hair), 2 nanometers thick, and is comprised of about 14,000 DNA bases. 7000 of these DNA bases belong to a long single strand, a DNA molecule that just happens to be the genome of the virus M13 (There is no fundamental significance to the fact that it is viral DNA, I could buy it and it was cheap and pure). The other 7000 of these bases belong to about 250 shorter strands, each about 30 bases long. These short strands fold the long strand into the smiley face shape. I call the method “scaffolded DNA origami”. ”