Abstract

The discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 marked the beginning of a new era in the biological sciences, and less than 30 years later Seeman proposed that DNA could be used to build synthetic nanostructures. Since then, the field of DNA Nanotechnology has flourished. In this seminar I will explain how DNA can be used to build complex structures and devices from the bottom up, and how DNA molecular machines can be used for computation.

I will summarize my research on the principles underlying the self-assembly of a particular class of DNA nanostructure known as DNA origami, and I will discuss some of my work on surface-immobilised DNA molecular machines. Our ultimate goal is to integrate these devices with conventional solid-state electronics, which would facilitate data readout and open the door to low-power massively parallel processing.