We know that they have the code of life but what we don’t know is their hidden tacts. But slowly we’re construing them. Researchers in the U.S. have developed the smallest map ever from strands of DNA that resembles the Americas. The mini-map is just a few hundred nanometers (billionths of a meter) across, smaller even than some bacteria - a scale of 1:200 trillion. Sadly you’ll need a powerful atomic force microscope to feed on it.



Scientists manipulated the bonding in DNA to give it different shapes and believe it a big leap in the field of nanotechnology, ‘which aims to develop novel materials, devices and systems by manipulating individual atoms and molecules’.



The shapes, including a square, a triangle, a five-pointed star, and a smiley face, coupled with machine-like behavior of the DNA, on which scientists have been working for long, will speed up the whole manipulation process.



Thanks: P Rothemund



Via: BBC