Nano-Softball Made of DNA

For quite some time, DNA, the stuff our genes are made of, has also been considered the building material of choice for nanoscale objects. A team led by Günter von Kiedrowski at the Ruhr University in Bochum has now made a dodecahedron (a geometric shape with twelve surfaces) from DNA building blocks. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, these objects are formed in a self-assembly process from 20 individual trisoligonucleotides, building blocks consisting of a “branching junction” and three short DNA strands.

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<p><a href="http://www.physorg.com/news126243441.html">Nano-Softball Made of DNA</a></p> <p>For quite some time, DNA, the stuff our genes are made of, has also been considered the building material of choice for nanoscale objects. A team led by Günter von Kiedrowski at the Ruhr University in Bochum has now made a dodecahedron (a geometric shape with twelve surfaces) from DNA building blocks. As reported in the journal <i>Angewandte Chemie</i>, these objects are formed in a self-assembly process from 20 individual trisoligonucleotides, building blocks consisting of a “branching junction” and three short DNA strands.</p>