Researchers Report Largest DNA Origami To Date

MTorrice (2611475) writes Bioengineers can harness DNA's remarkable ability to self-assemble to build two- and three-dimensional nanostructures through DNA origami. Until now, researchers using this approach have been limited to building structures that are tens of square nanometers in size. Now a team reports the largest individual DNA origami structures to date, which reach sizes of hundreds of square nanometers. What's more, they have developed a less expensive way to synthesize the DNA strands needed, overcoming a tremendous obstacle to scaling up the technology.

Re: Eh, anyone here?

[dreamchaser]

If you would bother to read [wikipedia.org] before shooting off your mouth you'd see that there are plenty of potential applications. It's not just being done for the 'cool' factor.

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[dreamchaser]

Technology doesn't just magically appear. It is worthwhile research that if it pans out could have some really wide ranging medical applications.

like a virus drill

[doug141]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]

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[rmdingler]

No... what in the Universe could have assembled itself?

Ah.

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[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to claim that 'DNA has been shown to be magnetoresponsive', you might consider offering links that have at least something to do with DNA. It might also help to not post utter crap about Earth's magnetosphere having a 'magnetic harmonic', let alone 'at the same frequency as the resonance demonstrated by DNA'.

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[Anna Merikin]

I don't usually respond to ACs but cause you're dead wrong and call me a liar, here's both barrels..

From the first link

We found that extracellular fields induced ephaptically mediated changes in the somatic membrane potential that were less than 0.5 mV under subthreshold conditions. Despite their small size, these fields could strongly entrain action potentials, particularly for slow (~8 Hz) fluctuations of the extracellular field. Finally, we simultaneously measured from up to four patched neurons located

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

1. There's no mention of either Earth's magnetic field or DNA in the Nature article, demonstrating that you can bullshit people twice for the price of one. Neat!

2. The fact that Earth's magnetic field has a documented history of significant changes, reversals, and even almost-disappearances for time periods way beyond the lifetime of any single multicellular organism demonstrates at least that the function of DNA isn't significantly disrupted by absence or presence of weak magnetic fields.

Addendum

[Anna Merikin]

A better link -- http://montagnier.org/IMG/pdf/... [montagnier.org]

Satisfied?

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[Anonymous Coward]

No - much like your earlier claims, that work is utter idiocy. You might consider reviewing some criticism regarding it here:
http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/13/0017256/nobel-prize-winner-says-dna-performs-quantum-teleportation

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[cinnamon colbert]

is this the same montagnier who claimed he could do immunology over the telephone ? (twisted pair, back in the day)'
if you are a troll, congrats , you have gotten a lot of people riled up about your nonsense; if you are serious, politely, let me say that you are barking up the wrong tree here
the nature article is about neuronal membranes, nothing to do with DNAassembly

you might consider that people spend hours inside MRIs, where the magnetic field is ~~ 10,000 times that of the earth
(oh, wait, now you have

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[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't self-assemble by magnetism, it self-assembles by hybridizing, Basically complementary bits of DNA pair up, and they like pairing up with complementary bits more then they like having the traditional double helix shape, so you can sort of weave with them.

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[cinnamon colbert]

uh, aren't these usually bp conserved, so they are iso energetic ?
if the net number of bp is reduced, where is the deltaG to make this go ?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the Schumann resonances have peak amplitudes of a few picoteslas, it seems highly unlikely that they affect DNA assembly.

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

"Magnetic harmonic?" "DNA resonance frequency?" Nice try. You know, people here aren't stupid.

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[Hex4def6]

I think any magnetic forces will pale in comparison to chemical forces at that scale.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Funny then how so many left wingers are so quick to spout ad hominem, vitriolic attacks. They must have small penises too! Maybe BOTH sides do! Perhaps it's time for a third party without all the hidebound rigid quasi-religious dogma and hatred!

I work on DNA

[cinnamon colbert]

and the idea of a lambda/M13 hybrid is cute, I bet dollars to donuts that this is not an industrial scale process by any means; long DNA (>10,000) is hard to work with and unstable
(wild type lambda DNA from, say, N E Biolabs, is about 250 dollars a *milligram*)
anything priced in milligrams is not, imo, an industrial process

it is true that much shorter DNA is sold for, afaik, macular degeneration, and whole virus particles are also used; this is not the same as origami things

anyway, DNA is temperature and

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[RockDoctor]

I see your points, but I'm also seeing a wet chemistry (if not exactly "bucket" chemistry) process that is producing what looks like pretty flat (nanometre level of flatness)surfaces in quite substantial areas. And the electrical properties of that substrate can be controlled to a significant degree. There's potential there for micro-mechanical systems, or chip substrates. Quite a lot of interesting potential there.

Hypothesizing that you could use this to produce low-power electronics for, say a wireless e