Nad and his Amazing NanoBots

NYU's Nad Seeman continues to astound with his amazing DNA nanorobots.

These little buggers are made using DNA origami, have two arms and can be used as construction workers to build the scaffolding for new structures.

Backgrounder
These 'bots are made for walkin'
NanoEngineering puts on a happy face
Tag-teaming with nature to build nanomachines

NanoEngineering Puts On A Happy Face

A great deal has been written about Nokia's nanotech-inspired Morph concept on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art and online at MOMA'S Design and the Elastic Mind.

But I am more interested in another item in the MOMA display: DNA Origami, featured here in Scientific American.

The smiley-faced DNA above (and, yes, looking at it does put me in a better mood) is the work of Paul Rothemund of CalTech. In March 2006, Rothemund achieved what became known in the science world as "DNA origami." He discovered how to synthesize one DNA strand that acts as a "scaffolding" for hundreds of other short strands microscopically "stapled" to it. The result is a 3-D shape that can be formed into literally anything.

Mark Sims, CEO of the nanotech computer-aided-design company Nanorex was so inspired by the breakthrough that he decided to change his company's mission to focus his company's first product, NanoEngineer-1, on designing DNA structures for research and education. I wrote about his company for a Detroit-area tech magazine (PDF 158 KB) a little while ago.

Mark recently contacted me to let me know that the first public release of NanoEngineer-1 is only about a week away. You can see some screen shots here.

I first met Mark on the plane ride home from a Foresight Institute Conference in Washington back in 2004 (when I won the Dork of the Year Award) and we have been in touch on and off ever since.

I know this achievement has been a long time coming for Mark and his little company-by-the-lake, so I wish him all the best as more users take his DNA design CAD for a test ride.

Backgrounder
Everything is animated
This little joint is jumping
DNA's Fellowship of the Nanorings

Tag-teaming with nature to build nanomachines

Nadrian Seeman of NYU doesn't want to waste time building nanomachines from scratch -- not when nature has already done most of the heavy lifting for him these past few billion years.

In "Beyond Biology: Making Factories and Computers with DNA," LiveScience has more on Seeman, DNA and nanotech's softer side.

The first person to see DNA's potential beyond biology was Naiman Seeman, a chemist at New York University. More than twenty years ago, he began imagining how the genetic information in DNA might be engineered to perform useful tasks.

"DNA structures are programmable by sequence, and so are their intermolecular interactions," Seeman says. "That makes them unique."

Whereas nature alone dictates how most molecules interact, DNA comes with a built-in code that researchers can re-formulate to control which DNA molecules bond with each other. The goal of this DNA tinkering is microscopic factories that can produce made-to-order molecules, as well as electronic components 10 times smaller than current limits.

"Nanofabrication is where we are going," Seeman told LiveScience. "It will happen soon." More here

And, to get your nanomotor running, the European Union and the Max Planck Institute in Germany want to fund your Frankenstein flagellum.

Related News
DNA Art: Origami Goes Nano

Backgrounder
These 'bots are made for walkin'
The Descent of Nano
Martyn Amos: Lecturer, Blogger
Nano-engineered intelligent flagellum?

These 'bots are made for walkin'

  

Do you remember the "DNA walker" that made headlines last year? (Stories can be found here, here and here)

I hadn't gone through recent nanotech patents and applications in a while, so when I was browsing through them yesterday I was pleased that New York University chemist Nadrian Seeman and his colleague William Sherman had filed a patent application in June.

Seeman is one of the rare working, grant-getting, patent-producing nanoscientists who believes that nanotech will eventually progress beyond building better tennis rackets and create useful things from the bottom up -- at least, one of the few who can openly admit it without jeopardizing his ability to get government grants.

Just last June, Spencer Reiss of Technology Review asked Seeman whether nanomanufacturing was "imminent" and how he would respond to "nanotech's skeptics" (read "molecular manufacturing"). The professor did not take the bait and responded that it's not going to knit sweaters anytime soon, but:

"Everything we're talking about is doable. Is it doable on a scale that's going to be worthwhile? No one knows. In 25 years we've taken something that was in my imagination to the point where we can take out patents and where there are now whole conferences devoted to the topic."

And of course his patent application is winding its way through the system now.

I'll lay aside the question of molecular manufacturing for now, since that often turns too emotional and unproductive. However, even other scientists who don't really care whether nanobots will someday knit a sweater or cure world poverty can look at Seeman's DNA walker and see what's there for them.

The walker was made of fragments of DNA that strolled on two legs just 10 nanometers long. The little beast took two steps forward and two back.

Obviously, there isn't much use for DNA walking around. But it served its purpose -- it made headlines and drew attention to his research. Seeman acknowledged that the DNA walker is not going to be next holiday season's must-have toy. The point, he said, is to design molecules and get them to assemble into specific three-dimensional structures. In Seeman's mind, that could lead to some kind of nanomanufacturing application much like a Detroit-style assembly line, but with DNA robots pushing it down the track.

Now, here's where the process gets tricky and can break down. As I've written before, these basic researchers do not necessarily know what exactly it is that they have. That's where entrepreneurs or other specialists can come in. You don't like molecular assemblers or think they're impossible, or too long-term? Well, don't use it for that. I don't know. Maybe you have no use for walking DNA robots at all. However, they also link together into scaffolds, which might be of more use in assembly of nanoparticles of the type you desire. DNA was born for self-assembly. So, if you could get DNA to bend to your will by programming it to assemble into any structure you want, what would you do?

Oh, one more thing about that patent application. I had not known that the research was funded, in part, by the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Air Force. Hmmm. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that both branches are planning on some pretty fantastic voyages.

Further Reading
Not Your Daddy's DNA
Smallest Robot (with a video link)