BioCoder #2

DIYbio Around the World, Part II

Noah Most

Until August 2014, I will be traveling the globe visiting people within the DIYbio community and playing around with biology. In October, I finished up what was a grand introduction to DIYbio in Victoria, Canada, at the Victoria Makerspace. Among many amazing experiences, I worked on a project to explore the feasibility of DNA origami for DIYbio.

DIY DNA Origami: Wrapping Up from Last Issue^[1]

Paul Rothemund dropped a gauntlet in his 2008 TED talk, describing his new method in the field of DNA nanotechnology as “so easy you could do it at home in your kitchen and design the stuff on a laptop.” That method is called DNA origami, and it enables you to treat DNA as a nanoscale construction material. For example, researchers have used this technique to create nanorobots for the delivery of drugs^[2] as well as programmable nano-breadboards.^[3] A long, single-stranded DNA “scaffold,” typically the M13mp18 bacteriophage, is folded upon itself and pinched into the desired shape by oligonucleotide “staples” that are easily designed on the computer.^[4] To our knowledge, no one has taken Rothemund up on the kitchen biology challenge and actually attempted DIY DNA origami. Last issue, I examined whether this could be a reasonable DIYbio project, and in this issue, I can happily report an answer: yes! We successfully synthesized a proof-of-concept design, a simple 2D light bulb, and imaged it with an atomic force microscope (AFM). In tandem, we produced ...