Let's Twist Again

As if holding the instructions for life wasn’t enough, DNA is also a handy building material. Yet while nanotechnologists are taking creative steps with DNA origami – designing DNA structures which fold into tiny machines after a squirt of chemicals or blast of a laser – sometimes the results are unexpected. Using a combination of cryogenic electron microscopy and computer modelling, scientists inspect these tiny structures in greater detail, spotting flaws, or useful features they can work into future, refined designs. Here the new approaches simulate the dynamics of twisting DNA strands (grey) bunched together by shorter DNA 'staples' (bright colours) creating various shapes and bundles. The increased detail allows structural wobbles like those in the ‘twisttower’ (left) to be corrected, balancing forces to make the shape more stable for creating useful tiny structures, which may one day shuttling drugs around the human body.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Massimo Kube, Fabian Kohler and Elija Feigl, and colleagues
• Physik Department, Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, December 2020