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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."
ned seeman at nyu has been doing this for years
it has little if any practical value; dna is VERY $$, and a delicate molecule that is destroyed by normal shipping temperatures (at least in tuscon)
the idea that dna will be any sort of industrial material for anything is fantasy
If you ever thought you might like to get paid for playing with Lego's this looks like the closest you are going to get.
;) Then when you turn on the light, and view under a microscope, you'd see your model rendered in color.
How about this idea: You tag blocks with flourescent dyes and assemble them according to a computer voxel model one color at a time (using whatever method pleased you the most
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
First of all, the DNA pyramids are useful because they have some attractive properties, namely they are about 10 nanometers wide and are rigid. They are also tetrahedral in shapre (3 faces and a base) which makes them good building blocks
To be precise, a tetrahedron has 4 identical faces. It doesn't make sense to distinguish one as the "base". This is in contrast to an actual "pyramid" shape, like the ones in Egypt, which have a square base, and 4 triangular sides.
This all lends itself rather nicely to developing things like three dimensional electronic circuits.
Aren't all electronic circuits three dimensional, since we live in a 3d universe? If not, does going in 3 dimensions let us do anything more? My guess is that a 2d turing complete computer is the same as a 3d turing complete computer, so what's your point?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is awesome, I accidentally produced something that I suspect is very similar to this no more than 8 months ago using DNA to self-assemble gold nanoparticles. The pictures are gorgeous (but inconclusive, unfortunately). http://web.mit.edu/neltnerb/www/bn-triangles-1.jpg
http://web.mit.edu/neltnerb/www/bn-triangles-2.jpg
Sorry, I have no particular desire to register an account here for my very rare posts.
And Kuna, don't laugh. I promise, I'm not a total dork. But DNA self assembly is still cool.
What would be the life expectancy of such constructions? IIRC, DNA are pretty "fragile" molecules.
For modern computers, a more relevant abstraction of computational power would be a random-access machine, since it models not just what kind of problems can be solved, but also (more realistically) in how much time that solution is found.
At a practical level, current chips are limited by the distance (lenght of wires) between interacting gates. In normal, planar designs, this distance can be reduced by regrouping interacting gates as close to each other as possible (ie.: making designs more clever), reducing the total number of gates or reducing the gate size (thus reducing the total chip size). Adding a second layer could half the needed die surface, allowing for smaller propagation times, thus higher clock frequency/more complexity/surface.
However, adding more layers has a lot of practical problems in the current production process. Therefore *any* successful alternative to produce 3D semi conductors is likely to boost processing power.