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Tiny tiles, tiny targets

Nature Biotechnology volume 26, pages 299–300 (2008)Cite this article

A new label-free method for RNA detection uses programmable DNA tiles and atomic force microscopy.

Detection of nucleic acids is routinely carried out using enzyme-based techniques such as PCR. This is likely to change, however, with the development of enzyme-free detection approaches that still allow high sensitivity and specificity but also offer massive multiplexing capabilities, lower costs and greater assay stability. An interesting example of this new direction is recent work by Ke et al.1 published in Science. Using a form of programmable DNA folding recently introduced by Rothemund2, the authors create self-assembled, two-dimensional nucleic acid 'tiles'. These structures not only bind complementary sequences, but also provide positional and structural information based upon the type of tile and the location of the capture strand used for detection, allowing the results of RNA hybridization to be imaged by atomic force microscopy.

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Figure 1: Method for label-free detection of RNA using an atomic force microscope and self-assembled DNA structures.

Kim Caesar

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David A. Giljohann and Chad A. Mirkin are in the Department of Chemistry and International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208-3113, USA. chadnano@northwestern.edu,

    David A Giljohann & Chad A Mirkin

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  1. David A Giljohann
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  2. Chad A Mirkin
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C.A.M. is the founder and a member of the board of directors of Nanosphere, Inc.

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Giljohann, D., Mirkin, C. Tiny tiles, tiny targets. Nat Biotechnol 26, 299–300 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0308-299

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