DNA nanodevices, now can be designed within minutes with MagicDNA
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| Credits: Ohio state university |
The future of medicine have to be very advanced due to all the difficulties that the biology of pathogens throw at us, mutations, immunity, and all that other stuff makes us make the current medicines better to win over the war against diseases, one part of this is delivering drugs to the right part of the body. One way proposed for this is using nanobots to carry the drugs to the part of the body which is infected by the pathogens and using them to detect the pathogens.
The current nanodevices built using DNA rely on geometrical structures and it's very challenging to produce them, taking up to several days to design before, but now researchers can make these nanodevices within minutes and also make them more complex and useful.
Well, that will be the future but how were researchers able to make these nanodevices in minutes, that was with the help of new software, called MagicDNA.
This software helps researchers design ways to take DNA strands and combine them into complex structures, which can act like hinges, rotors, and move and also do tasks. Previously this was done by slower methods which took days, and now it can be done within a fraction of the time which it took beforehand. This software has many advantages also, giving the ability to make designs in 3D, earlier tools only had the ability to work in 2D. So, now scientists have the ability to make more complex designs. And the software also allows them to build DNA structures bottom-up or bottom down.
Using a bottom-up design lets researchers make individual strands of DNA organized into the structures they want and also allows fine control over local device structure and properties. And in a top-down design, they decide how their overall device needs to be shaped geometrically and then automate how the strands are put together.
The researchers were able to make devices, like robot arms with claws, that can pick up things and also an airplane, which is 1000 times smaller than the width of human hair.
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| Credits: Ohio state university |
MagicDNA software will be used at universities and research labs, opening doors to the future of nanotech, nanodevices, medicine, and many other areas where nanodevices can be used. DNA nanotechnology is aimed to start a commercial appliance in the upcoming decade.
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