oxDNA aids the creation of nanoscale DNA dinosaurs

In a paper that has just appeared in the journal Science Robotics, researchers from Sydney and Oxford report a modular way to create nanoscale objects out of DNA.

The building block is a barrel-shaped DNA origami. On the outside of these barrels are linkers that can be precisely programmed to enable the assembly a set of barrels into almost any shape. A nanoscale dinosaur was one of a series of proof-of-principle objects created to illustrate to power of the approach. 

The team was led by Shelley Wickham at the University of Sydney; Shelley is a former Clarendon scholar in Oxford Physics. Hannah Fowler in the group of Jonathan Doye used the oxDNA model to simulate the DNA origami barrels, particular focusing on how to optimally design the linkers.

The work has been featured in The Guardian, and you can read the original paper in Science Robotics.