DNA Microcircuits May Replace Silicon Chips

Researchers have used modified DNA molecules in combination with carbon nanotubes to create microscopic electrical circuits that may someday replace silicon chips as the basis for a new generation of super fast computers.

Investigators at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel; www.technion.ac.il) attached carbon nanotubes, known for their extraordinary electronic properties, onto specific sites on strands of DNA. During the process the DNA was coated with a bacterial protein that directed the binding of the one nanometer in diameter nanotubes to a specific site on the DNA. Subsequently, the DNA was coated with gold particles. The bacterial protein protected the area of the bound nanotube, so only the ends of the DNA molecule were coated. The study was published in the November 21, 2003, issue of Science.

"The DNA serves as a scaffold, a template that will determine where the carbon nanotubes will sit,” explained senior author Dr. Erez Braun, associate professor of physics at the Technion. "There are some points where nature smiles upon you, and this was one of those points. Carbon nanotubes are naturally rigid structures, and the protein coating makes the DNA strand rigid as well. The two rigid rods will align parallel to each other, thus making an ideal DNA-nanotube construct. In a nutshell, what this does is create a self-assembling carbon nanotube circuit.”





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