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Self-Assembling DNA Pyramids
FleaPlus writes "Physicists in England and the Netherlands have unveiled a technique for constructing rigid DNA pyramids. With the technique, trillions of d4's can rapidly self-assemble from a solution of single-stranded DNA. The scientists also showed that single DNA strands called linkers could be used to attach the tetrahedra to each other, acting as a possible building block for 3D nanofabrication."
Man those D&D games are getting complicated!
Oh... nevermind
---
"Physicists in England and the Netherlands have unveiled a technique for constructing rigid DNA pyramids."
Goes perfect with Egyptians created from DNA.
Let my nucleotides go!
So the real builders oof the pyramids are nonfrabricators. The Egyptians grew them instead of using slave labor to drag blocks into place or getting help from UFOs.
Nanu Nanu (obligatory Mork and Mindy reference).
And I thought stat-inflation was bad before...
"Loknar, roll ten to the eighteenth D4s. And this time, try to keep them all on the table."
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
So if I store my razor blades under this, will they remain eternally sharp?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I knew my DNA had to be a pyramid.
It is more in line with my shape, gets wider the farther you go down!
trillions of d4's can rapidly self-assemble from a solution of single-stranded DNA
In other news, several cheerleaders who were interviewed stated that they were skeptical as pyramids in general are "way hard." They also stated that they doubted the numbers claimed as the largest pyramid they had heard of was composed of 280 or so cheerleaders and that a trillion is "like at least double that."
Just as soon as you send $1.00 each to the following people, then place your name on the top of the list and delete the last name from the bottom of the list! It's that simple and totally legal!*
* In Antarctica
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This explains my mysterious Z chromosome...
Unexpect the expected!
Drat. If I had known that, I wouldn't have spent the last two years making and characterising the bloody things.
Should I be more embarrassed that I get my news from a source that calls tetrahedra "d4s", or that I immediately knew what that meant?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
It's nice to see they're finally making use of that captured Goa'uld technology.
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
Bah, watch people mention a million things they can build from this thing. Big deal, I can build a whole person from DNA.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I can assure you bio nano-building blocks are not the least scary. I am working with them every day.
Ok, so it is a big strange that my left leg has turned a solid grey-bluish color, but it works just as well as the initial one and I've gotten used to it solving math questions faster than me.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
...entire self-assembling DNA-based organisms. Scientists are working hard on the technology, but research is hampered by a mysterious and poorly understood preliminary stage called "sex".
the egyptians did this millenia ago
But that was never reported on slashdot.
sarchasm
"If so, then you can call it a food pyramid! :P"
It's nice to see that graduates of the Bob Saget School of Comedy are still finding time to expand on their art form.
"Derp de derp."
THANK YOU for your submission of a new
[x] nanostructure
[ ] laser
[ ] transistor
using
[ ] straw and bailing wire
[x] DNA strands
[ ] silicon
This is a bad idea, because
[x] a 3-D structure is difficult to heat-sink
[x] scientists likely never will produce a transistor this way
[ ] this is a case of outright fraud
The problem however is not to make circuits
[ ] out of lasers
[x] 3-D
[x] self ordered
But the problem is to make them
[x] reliably
[x] at low cost
[x] faster
Further this article was published in
[ ] Science
[ ] New Scientist
[ ] Nature
[x] Science News
which is primarily a publicity-seeking mag, and not a great peer-reviewed journal for physics.
I can say this because I have a
[ ] BS
[ ] MS
[x] PhD
in
[x] Physics
[ ] Electrical Engineering