Nanotechnology may have found its Henry Ford

The big leap in Seeman’s work is the ability to “remote control” the DNA arms, says Milan Stojanovic, a professor of medicine at Columbia University and director of the National Science Foundation’s Center for Molecular Cybernetics. Finally, his team can set up a protocol to fix errors along the way.

“They start with the same basic structure, but then can ‘build’ on this basic structure depending [on] what they have in solution,” Dr. Stojanovic says in an e-mail. Being able to get high yields is also important for making future progress more rapidly.

Seeman’s work is rather unique, Stojanovic says. “Ned is unpredictably creative in his approach to science,” he says.

Another key contribution to future nanotechnology work is how Seeman manipulates the strand of DNA that connects the arms, says Paul Rothemund, a research associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Seeman borrowed a technique called “DNA origami” to act like a pegboard for the arms, which can be reconfigured. DNA is expensive, Mr. Rothemund explains. So, Seeman’s adaptive, elastic system uses fewer pieces of DNA to make a given molecular configuration. Rothemund likens it to having a set of clamps or vice grips that could be rotated to hold differently shaped objects, rather than using a whole new set of tools for every project.

Chengde Mao, an associate professor at Purdue University, is particular hopeful that Seeman’s work – and that of other nanotech scientists – could allow for breakthroughs in DNA, building three dimensional structures.

Seeman credits an art print by mathematical illusionist M.C. Escher for starting him on the road to using DNA as a way into nanotechnology in the early 1980s.

After trying unsuccessfully to grow crystals for experiments, he spoke with a colleague who was doing work in recombinant DNA, a brand-new field at the time. Seeman was “thinking about the Escher print ‘Depth,’ ” where six-finned fish float through space, he says. “I started thinking about a six-armed, three-dimensional junction.”

He began picturing how to shape DNA that way. At the time, nanotechnology was in its infancy, and most chemists were working with inorganic molecules. Seeman, however, decided that DNA was a better way to start because it has a built-in structure.

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