Nano Origami for DNA, Complete With Software

wisebabo writes "Some researchers at Technische Universitaet Muenchen and Harvard have developed a way to make DNA 'Origami' fold up into all sorts of desired nanoscale shapes. While this has been done before, there now seems to be a much greater assortment of shapes they can create. What's particularly interesting is that they've developed some software that can be used (presumably with a DNA assembler) that will create what you want; think of CAD/CAM on a molecular scale! 'The toolbox they have developed includes a graphical software program that helps to translate specific design concepts into the DNA programming required to realize them. Three-dimensional shapes are produced by "tuning" the number, arrangement, and lengths of helices.'"

Link to caDNAno software

[structural_biologist]

The research team that produced the paper in Science paper (link [doi.org] (subscription required to see more than the abstract)) described in the science daily writeup also published a paper in Nature (link [doi.org]) that more fully describes their method of creating three dimensional objects out of DNA (the newest paper expands these methods to construct more complicated objects with more precise curvature). Furthermore, they have published the open-source software that they used to design the DNA nanostructures (http://cadnano.org/). I was at a talk by the lead author of the Nature paper who said that, using their software, a high school student was able to design one of the structures they used in the paper as a summer project.

Re:Call me dense...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure about other techniques, but these DNA nanostructures can create potentially any 3-D (and to me, deposition sounds like a 2-D process, with a very tediuous 3-D aspect). I'm fairly certain that the combination of ease of use, manufacturing, and customizability is unmatched by any other technology, but feel free to correct me.

The talk I attended by William Shih had excellent AFM pictures of various 3-d shapes, including a trojan horse(think wooden sculpture). However, he did mention that the more complicated the structure, the longer it took to "cure", or go from mixture of oligos and structural strands to the completed form.

One particular application I could see this making significant headway into would be gene therapy. Cationic liposomes are currently the most effective vectors, but they are very toxic, among other negative qualities. DNA capsules may be more effective, especially if capsules can be easily modified for different payloads.