Category Archives: Transhuman News

Scientists have developed a new method of imaging the building blocks of life. It involves an electron microscope and a bed of nails.

DNA, we are taught early on, is colorful. The building block of life is not just a whirligig-like twist, its purines and pyrimidines neatly paired and labeled; it is also an explosion of primary reds and blues and greens and yellows, the As and the Gs and the Cs and the Ts linked together to create a kind of modified, twisted rainbow.

Of course, that rendering takes artistic license. Watson and Crick determined DNA's structure[pdf, but a highly awesome one] based on a combination of sophisticated guesswork and, crucially, x-ray crystallography -- and that remains a workable, and powerful, technique for visualizing DNA strands. But crystallography creates its own kind of rendering: It's a technology whose imaging power relies on diffracted light. When we look at those now-iconic images of the double helix, the fuzzy X inside the fuzzy O, we're not seeing the DNA itself so much as we're seeing x-rays deflected from its atoms.

Which makes the image below pretty amazing. Though it is significantly less colorful than textbook DNA, and a tad less tidy than the double helix-demonstrating images produced by x-ray crystallography, it is, in certain ways, much more realistic. It isn't a rendering; it's a direct image of DNA, captured through an electron microscope. Yes. YES.

Computer renderings and actual images of a DNA molecule, as seen through an electron microscope (Enzo di Fabrizio via New Scientist)

The image showsa single thread of double-stranded DNAsuspended on a bed of nanoscopic silicon pillars. It wascreated by Enzo di Fabrizio and a team at Italy's University of Genoa, which developed a new technique ("an experimental breakthrough," they call it) for the purpose. The team, New Scientist reports, found a way to snag strands of DNA out of a dilute solution by, essentially, dehydrating them. They developed a pattern of extremely water-repellent, silicon nanopillars -- pillars that would cause moisture to evaporate quickly and leave behind strands of DNA as threads. And then, at the base of their "nanopillar bed," the team drilled tiny (very, very tiny) holes. And through those holes, they shone beams of electrons, which allowed them to capture relatively high-resolution images of the DNA thread.

And here's an even-closer-up view of the strand itself, its base pairs fuzzily evident in the magnification.

The team justpublished the details of this imaging technique in the journal Nanoletters. And the new system represents a significant step forward for nanobiology and all the fields connected to it, giving scientists a new way to understand DNA. Particularly when it comes to its structure -- the stuff beyond the double helix. "Direct imaging becomes important," the paper notes, "when the knowledge at few/single molecule level is requested and where the diffraction does not allow to get structural and functional information." The technique, New Scientist points out, will help researchers to understand more precisely how proteins, RNA, and other biomolecules interact with DNA.

Which is exciting. But even for those of us who are not researchers, the new approach gives us a whole new way to do something else: to see where we came from.

Original post:
What DNA Actually Looks Like

STONY BROOK, NY--(Marketwire - Nov 29, 2012) - Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. ( OTCBB : APDN ), (Twitter: @APDN), a provider of DNA-based anti-counterfeiting technology and product authentication solutions, announced today that it has signed multiple contracts in support of the mandate by the Defense Logistics Agency for use of APDN's SigNature DNA marking and authentication technology.

These electronics companies have or will receive SigNature DNA and essential materials and services from APDN for DNA marking during or after manufacture.These steps will qualify them as SigNature DNA-compliant.

For manufacturers, a SigNature DNA Authenticity Mark as applied in production, certifies authenticity in an absolute, transparent and verifiable manner.For distributors and others, a SigNature DNA Provenance Mark establishes traceability to the point of the mark, assuring the entire supply chain that the part can be tracked to a supplier.

The contracts will enable electronics companies to fulfill the DLA mandate, announced on August 7 in a clause in Defense Logistics Acquisition Directive (DLAD) 52.211-9074, and expanded on November 7 with a provision atDLAD 52.211-9008. This mandate specifically requires SigNature DNA marking for procurements of items falling within Federal Supply Class 5962, Electronic Microcircuits. The requirement applies only to procurements made by DLA.

The developing list of participating defense contractors will enable the military electronics supply chain to move toward compliance with the anti-counterfeiting language in Section 818 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Section 818).A major deadline for Section 818, which imposes strict requirements for control of counterfeits, is due to be reached very soon. In a press announcement released on October 31, DLA pointed to the connection between the mandate and the coming implementation of NDAA Section 818:

The new requirement also facilitates the goals of Congress to protect DoD's supply chains and national cybersecurity, which Congress outlined in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. This requires DoD, as well as industry, to develop counterfeit item detection and prevention measures for electronic items.

In the same press announcement, DLA stressed the "broad implications" of its DNA marking mandate, stretching beyond electronics, saying:

DLA is initially targeting microelectronics, but the technology is used with other commodities commercially and has broad implications for other DLA products and equipment at risk for counterfeiting.

APDN suggested that electronics companies check with suppliers to find whether they have joined the list of companies which are SigNature DNA-compliant.

Janice Meraglia, Vice President, Military and Government Programs for Applied DNA Sciences, said, "DLA, in its efforts to provide support to our war fighters, has worked for years to develop new technology and processes to mitigate counterfeit risk.We are pleased to see these efforts materialized in the electronics industry, something which will benefit industry and national security."

See the original post here:
Applied DNA Sciences Announces Industry Contracts for SigNature(R) DNA Marking of Electronics

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