Look at the tiny nanoscale structures emerging from research labs at Duke University and Arizona State University, and it’s easy to imagine you�

Designing with DNA | NSF - National Science Foundation

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2023-01-25 19:00:12

Look at the tiny nanoscale structures emerging from research labs at Duke University and Arizona State University, and it’s easy to imagine you’re browsing a catalog of the world’s smallest pottery.

A new paper reveals some of these creations: itty-bitty vases, bowls and hollow spheres, one hidden inside the other, like housewares for a Russian nesting doll.

But instead of making them from wood or clay, the U.S. National Science Foundation -supported team of researchers designed these objects out of threadlike molecules of DNA, bent and folded into complex 3D objects with nanometer precision.

These creations demonstrate the possibilities of a new open-source software program developed by Duke researchers Dan Fu and John Reif. Described in the journal Science Advances , the software lets users take drawings or digital models of rounded shapes and turn them into 3D structures made of DNA.

The DNA nanostructures were assembled and imaged by ASU researchers. Each tiny hollow object is no more than 2 millionths of an inch across. More than 50,000 of them could fit on the head of a pin.