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New Nano-Scale DNA Research Tool Better Than Larger Gene Chips

Posted on: Friday, 11 January 2008, 16:50 CST

Lab-scale gene chips, move over for your smaller counterpart. Hao Yan of the Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute’s Center for Single Molecule Biophysics led researchers in creating a very small tool that may revolutionize genetic research. This tool, a nano gene chip, can be used to examine thousands of genes at the same time for mutations, much like the current gene chips, only this time the technology is tens of thousands of times smaller .

Stuart Lindsay, a physics professor and researcher at the Biodesign Institute says that this tool has the potential to be used for analyzing even single cells. The current technology can only analyze cells in batches, so this new technology would allow for more refined cell analysis.

Lindsay said that this new nano chip is one of the first practical applications of structural DNA nanotechnology. The technology draws on a method of folding a long, single strand of DNA into a complex structure bound by short synthetic staples, also known as DNA origami. They assemble themselves in a solution, and can be made cheaply with up to 10,000 billion items in the test tube. Each of these DNA probes has a dangling single strand of DNA ready to bind to the chemical messenger of the gene, or RNA.

Lindsay strongly believes that this is the first step towards a far-reaching future in nanotechnology.

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Source: redOrbit Staff

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