Current Issue
Volume 552 Number 7683 pp5-136
7 December 2017
This Week
News In Focus
Specials
Research
About the cover
The cover shows a representation of the Mona Lisa on a 8,704-pixel canvas, created by the self-assembly of DNA. The use of such two-dimensional DNA nanostructures to produce surface patterns with nanometre precision is not new, but their size has until now been limited to around 0.05 square micrometres — too small for many potential applications. In this issue, Lulu Qian and her colleagues reveal that when applying simple assembly rules recursively throughout a multi-stage process, a small set of unique DNA strands can be used to create 2D arrays of up to 0.5 µm2. In similar work, the size of 3D DNA nanostructures has been boosted: Peng Yin and his colleagues use a new generation of DNA bricks to form nanostructures of more than 10,000 components that can be sculpted into objects such as letters and a teddy bear; and Hendrik Dietz and his colleagues show that large objects can be efficiently assembled in a multi-stage process when using DNA building blocks with optimized shape and interaction patterns. The Dietz team also demonstrates a scalable, cost-efficient method for making the required DNA strands. A News & Views by Fei Zhang and Hao Yan puts these developments into context. Cover image: Grigory Tikhomirov, Philip Petersen & Lulu Qian/Caltech
