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We first posted about Paul Rothemund when he published his big DNA origami paper [pdf] back in March 2006. It was a really nice result not because he was the first to make cool DNA patterns, but because the method he developed was so general: by designing short staple strands he could make a long strand of viral DNA assemble into arbitrary patterns and proved this pretty convincingly by making happy faces and a pretty accurate world map (among other things).
I just saw this week that he also gave a talk at TED last March. It’s just five minutes and he does a nice job of explaining the principle behind his work. He also puts it in an interesting context. He points out that using a computer to program an arbitrary pattern that then assembles by itself in a test tube is a lot like casting a spell in that the right set of instructions take material form. Of course, the spells are still very longwinded and require a lot of intervention, but it’s a provocative thought.
Duelity Hot off the Press: Omnidirectional sensing of prey in weak electric fields by fish
Biocurious is written by Andre Brown and Philip Johnson, since 2005. Content of the weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
