As a result of the rapid development of nano-frontier technology, DNA robots at the “Money Lab” of California Institute of Technology are small and slow. It took a step of 5 minutes to take a step of 6 nanometers, which is almost one millionth of a human step.

It is only 20 nanometers long, about one thousandth of a grain of rice. It looks like a nematode. It is slender and has no face. Snakes are often wrapped around it. Its site of activity is a slab of DNA composition hidden in a test tube - it is too small to be injected.

There are two colors of molecular balls distributed on the board. This "nematode" swims around and picks up the ball to the designated position. Two colors are placed separately.

It is the first DNA robot in the world that can complete walking, grabbing, dropping, and sorting work at the same time. In September this year, "Science" published a paper about it.

"This is an important step for DNA robots," said John Reif, a professor of engineering at Duke University. He began to pay attention to the development of DNA synthesis research since the beginning of the 21st century.

To more people, this trekking is still in the invisible dimension of the naked eye.

Architecture is the inherent ability of DNA

DNA robots are not the same as robots that appear on the mass media. The latter is represented by Schwarzenegger's tough "Terminator" or the big-eyed Wali who drags his crawler. According to the money lab manager and assistant professor Qian Qian of the California Institute of Technology, the little guy in his lab was almost "a soft stretch rope" when he wasn't entangled with other companions.

Unlike those metal guys, its flesh consists of nucleotides. The latter is also a deoxyribonucleic acid, a composition of DNA. This is also the origin of its name.

In the 1980s, a New York Crystallologist named Naderian Seaman realized that the famous DNA was not only the secret of life, but also a great building material.

Seaman had a long beard and was a young professor who liked to joke during the lecture. His work in the lab was not very pleasant - it was always unsatisfactory to change the conditions and continuously experiment to crystallize in order to obtain the desired molecular results.

He suddenly opened his brain: Can we combine the results of nucleic acid?

After all, this is something that nature has done for thousands of years. Architecture is inherent in DNA.

As we all know, DNA is a double helix wound together. Nucleotides with complementary sequences, that is, A and T, C, and G meet each other, and they must be paired. Hold out the small tentacle and hold them tightly to make a spiral staircase.

From this perspective, the nanobiology experiment suddenly became a mother's knit sweater. As long as the complementary DNAs of the sequences are thrown together, they naturally combine the results. No adhesives, no wedges and no nail guns, and chemistry takes on all the work. The threads are intertwined with each other, and the direction in which the yarns extend is ever-changing. They can be wrapped around each other, wrapped around each other, and wrapped around flowers.

The "yarn" of the knitted sweater is cut from the DNA and the knife is a restriction enzyme. The long strands of DNA that are cut off are not as smooth as wool, but have long, big and small crutches. Those particularly prominent tips are called sticky ends. As their name implies, they can play a role in adhesion in the future weaving. They are the thread of the sweater.

Through knitwear-type synthetic synthesis, in 1982, Seaman received a Tic Tac Toe flower made of DNA. In fact, over the past 30 years, the results map in this field seems to be a large-scale yarn handmade book.

Seaman and his successors continued to use new codes to change the length of the cut, transform the way of winding, and create a variety of DNA molecular structure results. There are continuous two-dimensional patterns such as Roman tiles, there are three-dimensional hydrangea, and even a smiling face can be arranged on the molecular plane. DNA's "yarn" is arranged in a proper manner, as if it were a group gymnastic performance at the opening ceremony.

DNA artifacts can not only form static patterns, but also create robots that can act autonomously. Humans can design the movement of a composition through coding.

This is also due to natural help. DNA is a coded natural material. It can store large amounts of information and can therefore be designed for activities. The basics of coding are clear and concise—sequences. In addition, many signals can be converted into natural signals.

The robots in the money team have two "feets", one "arm" and one "hand." It moves on a special molecular surface, which consists of a short DNA composition, like a nail plate. Scattered nails need to be classified into small balls.

The robot's feet and nails have been placed in DNA fragments. The sequences are complementary, the fragments attract each other, and the foot presses on the nail. The long strip of robots climbs firmly on the nails, like a snake scorpion climbs a short pile.

By coding, both feet cannot step on a nail at the same time. When the robot moves, it only has to use the free foot to climb the nail that it wants to reach, and the foot on the original nail will automatically release it. It swims on the nail board, like a spring that moves between the grass.

The robot's classification of small balls is also achieved by relying on the help of a sequence. There are two DNA fragments on the ball, one that attracts the robot's free-swinging palm and can be picked up. A nail that attracts the destination can be put down. Two different colors of goods have to be sent to different destinations, so the pairing marks are different.

At work, the robot is designed to follow the simplest rules of behavior: scramble and revelance. Your home sweeping robot is spinning around and eating it on dust, as are DNA robots. When it is empty, the goods are picked up. When you are holding the goods, place the target nail and let it fall.

"This kind of roaming will not consume a little energy." Qian Yu said.

"It's a beautiful job," said a chemist in his video site channel. "Speaking of robots, we always think of mechanical controls and computers, and they see other directions and the natural side."

DNA robot moves "beads" with accuracy close to 100%

"They can reach where humans can't reach. Electromechanical robots are sent to Mars, and they can be sent to the bloodstream to accurately transport drugs." Qian Yu told the media.

The Qiang team's "elastic rope" does not lack the same kind. In the past 10 years, scientists have used synthetic DNA to create molecular robots with different functions.

A guy who looks like a small bucket with a lid may be the latest weapon to fight cancer. In September 2012, the Wes Bioinspired Engineering Institute published a paper in Science that introduced a new type of DNA robot.

The bucket contained medicine, and the outer wall of the bucket contained a lock - the double helix was wound tightly, and the two parts of the barrel were closed firmly to ensure that the medicine did not spill out.

The key to unlock the lock is a specific protein. Once a small amount of locked DNA recognizes this protein, it will attach to it, releasing the lock's helix and opening the entire bucket.

The researchers hope that it can swim in the body's oceans, safely bypassing healthy tissue, and passing through the red blood stream, and only when confronted with the black pressure of the diseased cells can they be stimulated and spit out the deep-seated gunfire.

This precise and effective attack makes it more like a fighter in the human body, distinguishing it from the indiscriminate attacks of traditional cancer chemotherapy.

At present, these DNA robots can only be active in test tubes, far from entering the human body to treat diseases. Chen Wenlong, a nanobiologist at Monash University in Australia, praised the work of the money team in an interview with the media. However, he also stated that if the robot rushes into the human body, the genetic code carried by synthetic DNA is likely to disrupt the human body. Genetic information.

The scientists' focus is on how to make these little guys move faster.

This spring, the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences cooperated with the team of East China Normal University to publish papers in Applied Chemistry and introduced a new robot they built that can be driven by exonuclease to achieve more efficient walking.

The Qiang team took the tactics of group operations. It takes a whole day for a single robot to sort through 12 "beads" of two colors. They then added more robotic helpers to this “worksite”. DNA robots go each way and efficiency is greatly improved. One day's work is shortened to a few hours, and the accuracy rate is kept close to 100%.

This is also the idea that DNA robots have been studying for a long time: Individual strength is smaller, and unity is also powerful.

In the future, Qian Hao hopes to imitate the ants that have completed the mission by collectively sending the robot to leave signals that can be identified by peers, thereby increasing the efficiency of roaming inaccuracies.

"A lot of possible uses of DNA robots in the future are still in the realm of science fiction," Qian said.

Life is also a program, it is natural to write programmers on it

"Although they are still slow and simple, DNA robots have already shown advantages over microelectronic robots," said John Reeve of Duke University.

He experienced the division of DNA research. At the end of the last century, the natural and close relationship between DNA and data had led many scientists to believe that they could create a DNA computer. However, after continuous experimentation, some of them felt more and more deeply annoyed: their own results are far behind the already existing and still rapidly developing microelectronics computers.

They suggest that DNA should be used to do what it does best, and that it should be processed in an organic organization or other similar environment. Microelectronics computers can't go there.

The young team at Qian Chen Lab is the latest successor to this trend. Among them are chemists who are obsessed with "a complex that does not exist in nature but is as complex as a natural creation" and programmers who have a doctorate in medicine. The common interest of this lab is: coding.

In the process of manufacturing robots, they always remind themselves: simple and simpler. The algorithm of the robot is as simple as possible, and the logic of the work follows a brief flow of “yes” or “no”. Even form is a simple line, there is no intricate weaving shape.

This is because: "The simpler it is, the more likely it is to be used as a basis for adding new features." Their goal is not to perfect a particular task, but to develop as many comprehensive uses as possible.

"My interest in my lab is the engineering principle for the construction of these atomic robots," Qian said.

Using engineering principles, programmers and engineers create a whole world of microelectronics, from tiny converters to various robots we are familiar with. In the same way, the molecular biological world can also change from simple to ever-changing.

In the eyes of money, life is also a program. Nature is a programmer who writes about it, and the numerator is the platform to carry it. Different sequences of programs can produce insects, bacteria or kittens.

However, our application of this procedure of life is still very limited. "More than 1,000 iPhone applications are born every day, and the number of 'applications' of molecules is far behind."

“Can humans have the opportunity to use the programming space of the entire molecular biological system?” Qian Yu asked in a lecture in 2016.

She wrote on the personal page of the California Institute of Technology: "Nature bears all the beauty and truth that we seek, but the journey sought also needs to be illuminated by the flame of the heart."

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