Harvard creates self-assembling DNA nanostructures from tiny DNA ‘Lego bricks’
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Harvard’s Wyss Institute, which brought us 700-terabytes-per-gram-of-DNA data storage earlier in the year, has now produced DNA Lego bricks — three-dimensional DNA building blocks that self-assemble into more than 100 different, three-dimensional structures (pictured above).
These DNA Lego bricks are short strands of DNA that have been specially crafted to join with other DNA bricks at a 90-degree angle — just as if you had pushed two eight-stud Lego bricks on top of each other at 90 degrees. By joining more and more of these DNA bricks together, a 3D structure emerges. In this case, the DNA Legos are built into 25-nanometer cubes, which consist of around 1,000 voxels, with each voxel consisting of DNA strands that are just 2.5nm. A voxel (volumetric pixels) is a term borrowed from graphics; it’s essential the 3D equivalent of a 2D pixel.
The Wyss Institute call these cubes the “master molecular canvas.” By restricting which DNA bricks are available during self-assembly, 102 distinct 3D shapes were formed. In the image at the top of the story you can see the simulated 3D models of these 102 shapes, and below is an actual microscopic view from above. As you can see, the level of detail is really quite astonishing — and even better, some of the shapes include intricately detailed tunnels and cavities. “This is a simple, versatile and robust method,” says Peng Yin, who led the project.
Essentially, Peng Yin is now an architect of, quite possibly, the world’s smallest building blocks. Intel alters features that are perhaps 30 nanometers in size, while Yin has the power to alter a single 2.5nm voxel. This is important and exciting because changing a single voxel could alter the function of the DNA cube, much as moving a single transistor alters the function of a computer chip.
As for what these self-assembled DNA cubes will actually be used for, the answer is probably medicine. DNA molecules are (obviously) biocompatible, and Harvard’s Wyss Institute is generally oriented towards medical research. The general idea is that you could somehow fashion a DNA structure that interacts with the human body in a curative or preventative way — or, more simply, you might fashion a DNA cube that can carry medicine to a specific region of the body.
Moving forward, there could be non-medical applications too. In much the same way that Harvard’s DNA data storage could be used for storage in computer systems, these DNA building blocks might one day form the basis of biological (or digital-biological hybrid) computers.
Research paper: DOI: 10.1126/science.1227268 – “Three-Dimensional Structures Self-Assembled from DNA Bricks”