Hotwiring the Human Genome: The Programming Language of Life
Gene identification is big business, a vital step in ongoing research into the programming language of life itself - chasing down the diseases and even starting to look at improving the design. Current gene detection techniques require microliters of genetic material, which may not sound like much but when the stuff you're interested in is measured in molecules it adds up to a whole hell of a lot of very fragile material.
Deoxyribonucleic acid might be a big long name, but the stuff itself is pretty small, hard to produce to order and not something you want to waste.
Researchers at the Arizona State University are working on a much more efficient system, a nanotechnological approach hijacking the system best equipped to detect genes - more genes.
Why go to all the bother of building nanomachines from the ground up when there's a super-advanced system that's been running just fine for millions of years?
Using scaffolded DNA origami techniques they have engineered a DNA molecule which acts as a factory, producing up to a hundred thousand billion specially designed DNA detector tiles at a time. Also note the phrase " scaffolded DNA origami", which proves that no matter how much awesome stuff you hear about, science can and will come up with something even crazier sounding.
Each tile trails a specially coded single strand of DNA. DNA code consists of four bases, thymine, adenine, guanine and cytosine (the famous TAGC coding responsible for you and everyone you know). T matches with A (don't laugh), G with C, so by trailing a loose strand of a specific code the tile can only be bonded to by a specific RNA fragment - the gene they wish to detect. When this happens the bond is visible to an atomic force microscope (AFM), along with a bar code imprinted on the tile. By mixing together batches of different tiles a single test can check a minute quantity of genetic material for hundreds of specified genes, theoretically identifying even a single incidence of the desired gene - a vast improvement over slow and inefficient macroscale testing.
That DNA can produce incredible constructs has always been known - it's kind of how we got here - but customizing this self-assembly capability for our own research and production ends is an incredible shortcut to highly sophisticated nanomachinery. This approach of hot wiring existing systems is gaining popularity, displaying equal measures of efficiency, practicality and sheer all-round awesomeness. Even with the completion of the Human Genome Project's plan to map the entire double helix five years ago, we didn't know one-tenth of what it does - and now we've only just scratched the surface of what it could do.
Posted by Luke McKinney.
Related Galaxy posts:
Is Modern Man in Evolution's Fast Lane? -A Galaxy Classic
Single cell gene detection
http://biosingularity.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/nanotechnology-innovation-may-revolutionize-gene-detection-in-a-single-cell/#more-697
Science magazine article http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5860/180
Human Genome Project http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml
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