Rise Of the Tiny Machines: Boffins Cook Up Autonomous DNA Sorting Robot
20th September 2017
While software developers might write algorithms for sorting, human and other organisms’ cells have their own biological ways for organizing the molecules inside them – such as how the proteins inside neurons are created in one spot and moved elsewhere.
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Along that vein, researchers have shown pre-programmed DNA origami can perform tasks such as travelling in a line picking up molecular “cargo”. In the previous academic work with DNA robots, though, humans have had to give intermittent instructions (such as adding molecules into a test tube to produce a response) or they couldn’t see more than a couple tasks performed.