Microscopic ‘Origami’ Brings DNA Into Fold

A Caltech scientist has taken the art of origami to a new level -- using DNA instead of paper.

Computer scientist Paul Rothemund said Wednesday that he had woven DNA strands into two-dimensional shapes, a process that could be important in nanotechnology design.

“The construction of custom DNA origami is so simple that the method should make it much easier for scientists from diverse fields to create and study complex nanostructures they might want,” he said in a statement.

In nanotechnology, materials are manipulated on a molecular or atomic scale. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter -- about 80,000 times narrower than a human hair. In nature, molecular “machines” perform biological functions such as muscle movement and photosynthesis. Nanotechnology is used in cosmetics, computer chips and stain-resistant clothes.

Rothemund, who described his DNA origami in the latest edition of the journal Nature, has constructed DNA objects including a triangle, a five-pointed star, a smiley face, and a tiny map of the Americas smaller than a typical bacterium.

“A biologist might use DNA origami to take proteins which normally occur separately in nature and organize them into a multi-enzyme factory that hands a chemical product from one enzyme machine to the next in the manner of an assembly line,” Rothemund said.

The process includes choosing a shape, using long DNA strands folded to form a scaffold of it, stapling it together with computer-generated short DNA strands and refining it on a computer.