DNA Is Blueprint, Contractor And Construction Worker For New Structures

February 4, 2008 | Source: Science Daily

Northwestern University researchers report they have used DNA as the blueprint, contractor and construction worker to build a three-dimensional structure out of gold.

Changing the DNA strand’s sequence of As, Ts, Gs and Cs changes the blueprint, and thus the shape, of the crystalline structure.

The technique, to be published in the journal Nature, and reflecting more than a decade of work, is “a major and fundamental step toward building functional ‘designer’ materials using programmable self-assembly,” according to the Northwestern statement.

This “bottom-up” approach will allow scientists to take inorganic materials and build structures with specific properties for a given application, such as therapeutics, biodiagnostics, optics, electronics or catalysis.