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Nature 440, 283-284 (16 March 2006) | doi:10.1038/440283a; Published online 15 March 2006

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Nanostructures: The manifold faces of DNA

Lloyd M. Smith1

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When it comes to making shapes out of DNA, the material is there, and its properties are understood. What was missing was a convincing, universal design scheme to allow our capabilities to unfold to the full.

As civilization has developed over the past 10,000 years, humankind has learned how to build larger and larger structures; over the past two decades, we have begun to learn how to build smaller and smaller structures. On page 297 of this issue1, Paul Rothemund presents a material step forward in this second arena: he describes a stunningly simple and versatile approach to the fabrication, by self-assembly, of two-dimensional DNA nanostructures of arbitrary shape.

  1. Lloyd M. Smith is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin, 1101 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
    Email: smith@chem.wisc.edu

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