DNA does the work: Building new gold crystals

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Using DNA, the blueprint of life, U.S. researchers said they have made a three-dimensional structure from particles of gold in a development that could lead to a host of custom-designed materials.

The technique helps solve a basic problem in nanoscience: getting impossibly small particles to assemble themselves according to a predetermined design.

"We're using inspiration from life to create new forms of matter," said Chad Mirkin, director of Northwestern University's International Institute for Nanotechnology in Evanston, Illinois. "It's a real example of man over nature."

The idea takes advantage of the molecular biology of DNA, in which one strand of DNA forms a bond with a complementary strand to make what is called a base pair.

Mirkin and colleagues simply design the specific genetic code using the four building blocks of DNA -- adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine or A, G, C and T -- and attach the gold particles to those strands.

"Think of it as taking a set of particles, modifying them with short strands of DNA and making those particles like chemically specific Velcro," Mirkin said in a telephone interview.

"I can add complementary strands of DNA that bind with one another in preconceived and highly designed ways."

The researchers used double-stranded DNA in each particle, with one of the strands significantly longer than the other.