A tiny space shuttle made out of DNA "LEGO bricks" shows how scientists could someday build new technologies on the smallest scales.

Single DNA strands became "LEGO bricks" that could assemble together by themselves into 102 individual 3D shapes. Harvard researchers manipulated the DNA coding of the bricks so that they could form solid shapes such as the tiny shuttle, honeycomb structures, and even "written" features on a solid base such as numbers and letters of the English alphabet.

"Once we know how to compile the correct code of complex shapes and add it to the synthetic DNA strands, everything else is simple and natural," said Yonggang Ke, a chemist at Harvard University. "Those DNA strands are like smart LEGO bricks that know exactly where to go by themselves."

DNA bricks offer a powerful new tool for building structures in the tiniest detail, according to Ke and his colleagues in their study detailed in the Nov. 29 online edition of the journal Science. The work could lead to tiny medical devices for delivering drugs inside the human body or next-generation computer circuits.

But the DNA nanotechnology breakthrough also touches upon one of science's greatest mysteries how life on Earth assembled itself from a jumble of molecules in the primordial ooze. A DNA strand's width is about 1 nanometer (1 billionth of a meter) far smaller than a human hair's width of 60,000 nanometers.

Replicating life's miracle

The idea of DNA bricks that can assemble into shapes on their own seems fantastical for humans used to building things step-by-step. But it's just a hint of what nature does all the time through self-assembly, Ke said.

"All life forms on earth are self-assembled, in an environment of an enormous amount of small molecules and macromolecules, such as DNA, RNA and proteins much, much messier than our small DNA "soup" in a test tube," Ke told TechNewsDaily.

The Harvard lab of Peng Yin, senior author on the new study, had used DNA to build 2D shapes. The 3D breakthrough relied upon the bricks each consisting of a single DNA strand with 32 nucleotides DNA's building block molecules that can bind to as many as four neighboring bricks.

Two bricks connect to one another at a 90-degree angle to form a 3D shape, similar to connecting a pair of two-stud LEGO bricks. Researchers designed the 3D shapes they wanted by manipulating the coded "recipe" of how DNA's base pair molecules bind to one another. [New DNA Computer Stores 1 Bit of Data]

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DNA 'LEGOs' Build a Mini Space Shuttle