this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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DNA Nano-Engine (www.techbriefs.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That seems so... odd. It's like building a working computer out of tens of thousands of usb thumb drives.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Haha, it is quite a good analogy! The drives even contain schematics on how to build a really fancy computer, but they are very complex and if you try to change something it usually breaks down. So in the end you just write really simple instructions to each drive, throw them in a box, shake it, and discover that the drives themselves self-assembled into the computer you wanted.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah and if you do it enough times, the usb drives might assemble into grey goo.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

Gray goo (also spelled as grey goo) is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating machines consume all biomass (and perhaps also everything else) on Earth while building many more of themselves, a scenario that has been called ecophagy (the literal consumption of the ecosystem). The original idea assumed machines were designed to have this capability, while popularizations have assumed that machines might somehow gain this capability by accident. Self-replicating machines of the macroscopic variety were originally described by mathematician John von Neumann, and are sometimes referred to as von Neumann machines or clanking replicators. The term gray goo was coined by nanotechnology pioneer K. Eric Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation.

^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

DNA nanotechnology is amazing! You can see a 3D visualisation of the assembled structure here: https://nanobase.org/structure/196

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

WOW, what a great link. I have posted a stereo image of the structure to both 3D anaglyph view and CrossView

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Thank you! And really nice! What software do you use to create those? If you're interested, you can also load the "dat" and "top" files from Nanobase into https://sulcgroup.github.io/oxdna-viewer/ and export files for Blender, etc. I'm also trying to get this to work: https://akodiat.github.io/oxJenga/, were you can interact with a live DNA origami simulation in VR/AR, but the leaf spring design still is a bit too large for the software to handle, unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected], [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago