{"id":1720,"date":"2021-05-10T10:04:22","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T10:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2021-05-10T10:04:22","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T10:04:22","slug":"foldable-organic-and-easily-broken-down-why-dna-is-the-material-of-choice-for-nanorobots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1720\/foldable-organic-and-easily-broken-down-why-dna-is-the-material-of-choice-for-nanorobots\/","title":{"rendered":"Foldable, organic and easily broken down: Why DNA is the material of choice for nanorobots"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Only in cancer medicine do we aim to attack and kill legions of our own cells. But healthy bystander cells often get caught in deadly crossfire, which is why cancer treatments can cause severe side effects in patients.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Doctors know that we need smarter medicines to target the bad guys only. One hope is that tiny robots on the scale of a billionth of a metre can come to the rescue, delivering drugs directly to rogue cancer cells. To make these nanorobots, researchers in Europe are turning to the basic building blocks of life \u2013 DNA.<\/p>\n

Today robots come in all shapes and sizes. One of the strongest industrial robots can lift cars weighing over two tons. But materials such as silicon are not so suitable at the smallest scales.<\/p>\n

While you can make really small patterns in solid silicon, you can\u2019t really make it into mechanical devices below 100 nanometres, says Professor Kurt Gothelf, chemist and DNA nanotechnologist at Aarhus University in Denmark. That\u2019s where DNA comes in. \u2018The diameter of the DNA helix is only two nanometres,\u2019 says Prof. Gothelf. A red blood cell is about 6,000 nanometres across.<\/p>\n

Lego<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Tania Pati\u00f1o, a nanotechnologist at the University of Rome in Italy, says DNA is like Lego. \u2018You have these tiny building blocks and you can put them together to create any shape you want,\u2019 she explained. To continue the analogy, DNA comes in four different coloured blocks and two of the colours pair up opposite one another. This makes them predictable.<\/p>\n

Once you string a line of DNA blocks together, another line will pair up opposite. Scientists have learnt how to string DNA together in such a way that they introduce splits and bends. \u2018By clever design, you branch out DNA strands so that you now have three dimensions,\u2019 said Prof Gothelf. \u2018It is very easy to predict how it folds.\u2019<\/p>\n

Dr Pati\u00f1o is developing self-propelled DNA nanorobotics in her project,\u00a0DNA-Bots<\/a>. \u2018DNA is highly tuneable,\u2019 she said. \u2018We can have software that shows us which sequences produce which shape. This is not possible with other materials at this tiny scale.\u2019<\/p>\n

While DNA nanorobots are a long way from being used in people, with Prof. Gothelf saying that \u2018we won\u2019t see any medicines based on this in the next ten years,\u2019 progress is being made in the lab. Already scientists can obtain a string of DNA from a virus, and then design using software shorter stretches of DNA to pair with and bend the string into a desired shape. \u2018This amazing technique is called DNA origami,\u2019 said Prof. Gothelf. It allows scientists to create 3D bots made from DNA.<\/p>\n

In an early breakthrough, Prof. Gothelf\u2019s research lab\u00a0made a DNA box with a lid<\/a>\u00a0that opened. Later, another group built\u00a0a barrel-shaped robot<\/a>\u00a0that could open when it recognised cancer proteins, and release antibody fragments. This strategy is being pursued so that one day a DNA robot might approach a tumour, bind to it and release its killer cargo.<\/p>\n

\u2018With nanorobots we could have more specific delivery to a tumour,\u2019 said Dr Pati\u00f1o. \u2018We don\u2019t want our drugs to be delivered to the whole body.\u2019 She is in\u00a0the lab of Professor Francesco Ricci<\/a>, which works on DNA devices for the detection of antibodies and delivery of drugs.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the network Prof. Gothelf heads up,\u00a0DNA-Robotics<\/a>, is training young scientists to make parts for DNA robotics that can perform certain actions. Prof. Gothelf is working on a \u2018bolt and cable\u2019 that resembles a handbrake on a bike, where force in one place makes a change in another part of the DNA robot. A critical idea in the network is to \u2018plug and play,\u2019 meaning that any parts built will be compatible in a future robot.<\/p>\n

\u2018This has the potential to make a completely new generation of drugs.\u2019<\/p>\n

Prof. Kurt Gothelf, Aarhus University, Denmark<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bloodstream<\/strong><\/p>\n

As well as carrying out specific functions, most robots can move. DNA robots are too miniscule to swim against our bloodstream, but it is still possible to engineer into them useful little engines\u00a0using enzymes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dr Pati\u00f1o previously developed a DNA nanoswitch that could sense the acidity of its environment.\u00a0Her DNA device<\/a>\u00a0also worked as a self-propelling micromotor thanks to an enzyme that reacted with common urease molecules found in our bodies and acted as a power source. \u2018The chemical reaction can produce sufficient energy to generate movement,\u2019 said Dr Pati\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

Movement is important to get nanorobots to where they need to be. \u2018We could inject these robots in the bladder and they harvest the chemical energy using urease and move,\u2019 said Dr Pati\u00f1o. In future such movement \u2018will help them to treat a tumour or a disease site with more efficiency that passive nanoparticles, which cannot move.\u2019 Recently, Pati\u00f1o and others\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that nanoparticles fitted with nanomotors spread out more evenly than immobile particles when injected into the bladder of mice.<\/p>\n

Rather than swim through blood, nanobots might be able to pass through barriers in our body. Most problems delivering drugs are due to these biological barriers, such as mucosal layers, notes Dr Pati\u00f1o. The barriers are there to impede germs, but often block drugs. Dr Pati\u00f1o\u2019s self-propelled DNA robots might change these barriers\u2019 permeability or simply motor on through them.<\/p>\n

Stability<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nanoparticles can be expelled from a patient\u2019s bladder, but this option isn\u2019t as easy elsewhere in the body, where biodegradable robots that self-destruct might be necessary. DNA is an ideal material, as it is easily broken down inside of us. But this can also be a downside, as the body might quickly chew up a DNA bot before it gets the job done. Scientists are working on coating or camouflaging DNA and strengthening chemical bonds to boost stability.<\/p>\n

One other potential downside is that naked pieces of DNA can be viewed by the immune system as signs of bacterial or viral foes. This may trigger an inflammatory reaction. As yet, no DNA nanobot has ever been injected into a person. Nonetheless, Prof. Gothelf is confident that scientists can get around these problems.<\/p>\n

Indeed, stability and immune reaction were obstacles that the developers of mRNA vaccines – which deliver genetic instructions into the body inside a nanoparticle – had to get over. \u2018The Moderna and the Pfizer (BioNTech) vaccines (for Covid-19) have a modified oligonucleotide strand that is formulated in a nano-vesicle, so it is close to being a small nanorobot,\u2019 said Prof. Gothelf. He foresees a future where DNA nanorobots deliver drugs to exactly where needed. For example, a drug could be attached to a DNA robot with a special linker that gets cut by an enzyme that is only found inside certain cells, thus ensuring that drug is set free at a precise location.<\/p>\n

But DNA robotics is not just for nanomedicine. Prof. Gothelf is mixing organic chemistry with DNA nanobots to transmit light along a wire that is just one molecule in width. This could further miniaturise electronics. DNA bots could assist manufacturing at the smallest scales, because they can place molecules at mind bogglingly tiny but precise distances from one another.<\/p>\n

For now though, DNA robotics for medicine is what most scientists dream about. \u2018You could make structures that are much more intelligent and much more specific than what is possible today,\u2019 said Prof. Gothelf. \u2018This has the potential to make a completely new generation of drugs.\u2019<\/p>\n

The research in this article was funded by the EU.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally published on Horizon Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only in cancer medicine do we aim to attack and kill legions of our own cells. But healthy bystander cells often get caught in deadly crossfire, which is why cancer treatments can cause severe side effects in patients. Doctors know that we need smarter medicines to target the bad guys only. One hope is that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":320,"featured_media":1721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,112],"tags":[172,418],"class_list":["post-1720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-ict","tag-dna","tag-nanorobots"],"yoast_head":"\nFoldable, organic and easily broken down: Why DNA is the material of choice for nanorobots - Horizon Magazine Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1720\/foldable-organic-and-easily-broken-down-why-dna-is-the-material-of-choice-for-nanorobots\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Foldable, organic and easily broken down: Why DNA is the material of choice for nanorobots\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Only in cancer medicine do we aim to attack and kill legions of our own cells. 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