Automating DNA origami opens door to many new uses
Researchers can build complex, nanometer-scale structures of almost any shape and form, using strands of DNA. But these particles must be designed by hand, in a complex and laborious process. This has limited the technique, known as DNA origami, to just a small group of experts in the field. Now a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere has developed an algorithm that can build these DNA nanoparticles automatically. In this way the algorithm, which is reported together with a novel synthesis approach in the journal Science this week, could allow the technique to be used to develop nanoparticles for a much broader range of applications, including scaffolds for vaccines, carriers for gene editing tools, and in archival memory storage. Unlike traditional DNA origami, in which the structure is built up manually by hand, the algorithm starts with a simple, 3-D geometric representation of the final shape of the object, and then decides how...