Tiny tic-tac-toe: Researchers reveal microscopic board made using DNA (although each game takes six DAYS to complete)
- Game uses a dynamic system to reshape tiny tiles of DNA
- Tiles were designed to fir into slots on the playing board, allowing games
- Technology could be used to allow nanomachines to be easily repaired
First, they recreated the Mona Lisa in DNA.
Now, California researchers have revealed a tiny tic-tac-toe game that uses DNA.
The game shows off a major breakthrough in nanotechnology, as it uses a dynamic system to reshape tiny tiles of DNA.
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California researchers have revealed a tiny tic-tac-toe game that uses DNA. The game shows off a major breakthrough in nanotechnology, as it uses a dynamic system to reshape tiny tiles of DNA.
‘We developed a mechanism to program the dynamic interactions between complex DNA nanostructures,’ said Lulu Qian, assistant professor of bioengineering at Caltech.
‘Using this mechanism, we created the world’s smallest game board for playing tic-tac-toe, where every move involves molecular self-reconfiguration for swapping in and out hundreds of DNA strands at once.’
A year ago, the team revealed their first DNA project.
Scientists in the laboratory of Lulu Qian, assistant professor of bioengineering, announced they had used a technique known as DNA origami to create tiles that could be designed to self-assemble into larger nanostructures that carry predesigned patterns.
They chose to make the world’s smallest version of the iconic Mona Lisa.
Now, they have refined the technique allowing tiles to be reshaped, allowing them to play tic-tac-toe.
Each tile has its own place in the assembled picture, and it only fits in that spot.
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In creating their new technology, Qian’s team imbued self-assembling tiles with displacement abilities.
The result is tiles that can find their designated spot in a structure and then kick out the tile that already occupies that position.
To get the tic-tac-toe game started, Qian’s team mixed up a solution of blank board tiles in a test tube.
Once the board assembled itself, the players took turns adding either X tiles or O tiles to the solution.
Because of the programmable nature of the DNA they are made from, the tiles were designed to slide into specific spots on the board, replacing the blank tiles that had been there.
HOW TO MAKE A MINI MONA LISA
To make a single square of DNA origami, the Caltech team needs a long single strand of DNA and many shorter single strands, called staples.
These are designed to bind to multiple designated places on the long strand.
When the short staples and the long strand are combined in a test tube, the staples pull regions of the long strand together, causing it to fold over itself into the desired shape.
A large DNA canvas is assembled out of many smaller square origami tiles.
The world’s smallest Mona Lisa has been made using microscopic tiles of DNA. The work of art is only 0.5 square micrometres, about the size of a bacterium, but is ten times larger than previous objects constructed with the technology
Molecules can be selectively attached to the staples in order to create a raised pattern that can be seen using atomic force microscopy.
The four molecules which constitute DNA are called nucleotides.
They are very particular about which other nucleotides they will bond with and this level of specificity let the team build very precise patterns.
This predictability let the researchers forge whatever patterns and pictures they want.
An X tile could be designed to only slide into the lower left-hand corner of the board, for example.
Players could put an X or and O in any blank spot they wanted by using tiles designed to go where they wanted.
After six days of riveting gameplay, player X emerged victorious.
The project could have major implications for nanoscale machines, allowing them to be easily upgraded.
The goal is to use the technology to develop nanomachines that can be modified or repaired after they have already been built, said says Grigory Tikhomirov, senior postdoctoral scholar and co-first author of the study.
‘When you get a flat tire, you will likely just replace it instead of buying a new car. Such a manual repair is not possible for nanoscale machines,’ he says.
‘But with this tile displacement process we discovered, it becomes possible to replace and upgrade multiple parts of engineered nanoscale machines to make them more efficient and sophisticated.’
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