Tiny machines made from strands of DNA can build copies of themselves, leading to exponential replication. Similar devices could one day be used to create drugs inside the body
By Matthew Sparkes
6 December 2023
DNA can be used to make nanomachines
Kiyoshi Takahase Segundo/Alamy
Nanoscale “robots” made of DNA that rapidly self-replicate could be harnessed to manufacture drugs or other chemicals inside the body, say researchers.
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Feng Zhou at New York University and his colleagues created the tiny machines, which are just 100 nanometres across, using four strands of DNA. The nanorobots are held in a solution with these DNA-strand raw materials, which they arrange into copies of themselves one at a time by using their own structure as a scaffold. The team didn’t respond to a request for comment, but say in their paper that their nanobots are capable of exponential reproduction.
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Andrew Surman at King’s College London, who wasn’t involved in the research, says that the nanobots are a step forward in creating machines from DNA that could manufacture drugs or chemicals, or even act as rudimentary robots or computers. Previous work has been limited to 2D shapes, which then have to be folded into 3D shapes – a process which comes with the chance of error. The new work allows 3D structures to be built from scratch.
“Assembling these kinds of things is tricky,” says Surman. “And how things are folded up, both in synthetic things that we make and in biomolecules, is really important. When things are folded wrong they don’t work.”
Richard Handy at the University of Plymouth, UK, says the DNA structures are basically a mould or a scaffold on which another nanostructure can be built – in this case a replica of the original. But that structure could also be designed to create drugs or other chemicals.