Share this article

 Email

 Print

 

Republish this article

The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.

More
Science & Technology

Flyby radar maps Saturn’s Earth-like moon

To let graphene boost batteries, add boron

Earth’s iron core is not ‘rock solid’

Wait for it: Ants pick perfect time to forage

Cow blood prevents globs of nano gold

Inbreeding threatens India’s wild tigers

Earthquake sensors on seafloor track whale songs

‘Simple path’ from fish hips to 4-legged walk

Ape-like ear bones found in hominin skull

Researchers from New York University and China’s Nanjing University outline details of the work in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

“An industrial assembly line includes a factory, workers, and a conveyor system,” says NYU chemistry professor Nadrian Seeman, the study’s senior author. “We have emulated each of those features using DNA components.”

The assembly line relies on three DNA-based components.

The first is DNA origami, a composition that uses a few hundred short DNA strands to direct a very long DNA strand to form structures to any desired shape. These shapes are approximately 100 x 100 nanometers in area, and about 2 nm thick (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter). DNA origami serves as the assembly line’s framework and also houses its track.

The second are three DNA machines, or cassettes, that serve as programmable cargo-donating devices.  The cargo species the researchers used are gold nanoparticles, which measure 5 to 10 nanometers in diameter. Changing the cassette’s control sequences allows the researchers to enable or prevent the donation of the cargoes to the growing construct.

The third is a DNA “walker,” which is analogous to the chassis of a car being assembled.  It moves along the assembly line’s track, stopping at the DNA machines to collect and carry the DNA “cargo.”

As the walker moves along the pathway prescribed by the origami tile track, it encounters sequentially the three DNA devices. These devices can be switched between an “on” state, allowing its cargo to be transferred to the walker, and an “off” state, in which no transfer occurs. In this way, the DNA product at the end of the assembly line may include cargo picked up from one, two, or three of the DNA machines.

“A key feature of the assembly line is the programmability of the cargo-donating DNA machines, which allows the generation of eight different products,” explains Seeman.

More news from NYU: www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news