DNA Circuits? An International Team Is One Step Closer to Using DNA Molecules to Build Micro-Computers

An international team of scientists hasannounced a breakthrough that could change the size of our machines and how they work.

Danny Porath, a professor of Molecular Biomedicine at Hebrew University, and his team from Israel, Denmark, Spain, the US, Italy and Cyprus, have just published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology that demonstrates long-strand DNA molecules can be designed to successfully conduct electricity.

During the last century, great progress has been made at making electronics, and their components, smaller and smaller. As a result, a computer that once took up an entire room to complete even simple tasks is now much more complex and can fit in our backpacks.

To go even smaller still, scientists have long theorized about molecular electronics, or using minute molecules to build the components of electric circuits,essentially turning molecules into micro-wires

 DNA molecules, which can be engineered to form molecular circuits into microscopic circuits, offered the most promise, but no one had yet made it work.

Porath and his team’s research, though, has successfully demonstrated not only are DNA circuits possible, but that designing DNA-conducting molecules can be done in a lab.

The successful research will hopefully re-ignite interest in using DNA to eventually power smaller and smaller machines and lead to a next-generation of devices.

According to Porath, in addition to making electronics smarter, the programmable DNA circuits may also make our electronic devices even cheaper an easier to make.

“The research paves the way for implementing DNA-based programmable circuits for molecular electronics, which could lead to a new generation of computer circuits that can be more sophisticated, cheaper and simpler to make,” Porath said, stressing that his team’s research, and especially the work of the young PhD students at the center of the efforts, may ultimate change computer technology as we know it.