Denver Rocky Mountain News, January 14, 1999, by Rick Callahan. Scientists have made a moving part out of a few strands of DNA – a step toward building incredible tiny "machines" that could someday perform intricate jobs such as building computer circuits and clearing clogged blood vessels in the brain. The hinge-like part, which bends on cue, is just four-ten-thousandths of the width of a human hair. The new work isn't the first time scientists have turned chemical compounds into moving parts. But previous examples have been hampered by their floppy nature. The DNA device, however, is particularly rigid and executes motions 10 times bigger, lead researcher Nadrian C. Seeman at New York University. The findings were reported in today's issue of the journal NATURE. The team hopes to eventually build other moving parts using DNA, including "arms" and "fingers" that someday could be mounted on a micro-robot. The work is the latest twist in the fledgling field of nanotechnology, or technology at an atomic scale. "This is a very beautiful demonstration of construction at that scale of a device that's actually functioning," said Daniel T. Colbert of Rice University's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. "We're kind of in the children's playtime toddler era of doing this. We've been thrown some blocks and Legos and Tinker Toys," he said. "We're just kind of picking them up and trying to assemble things out of them that can perform something useful." Thanks to: John F. Schuessler

January 21, 1999
George A. Filer
Filer's Files #3-1999
Majorstar@aol.com