Engineers Invent New Programming Language to Direct DNA: Medical Breakthroughs

You can program a computer and now you may be able to program DNA. Scientists are working on a method to use a structured set of instructions to direct how DNA molecules interact in a test tube or cell. The findings could help streamline efforts to design a network that can guide the behavior of chemical-reaction mixtures in the same way that embedded electronic controllers guide robots and other devices.

When a biologist or chemist makes a certain type of molecular network, the engineering process is hard to repurpose for building other systems. In order to overcome this issue, the researchers wanted to create a framework that gives scientists more flexibility.

"We start from an abstract, mathematical description of a chemical system, and then use DNA to build the molecules that realize the desired dynamics," said Georg Seelig, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The vision is that eventually, you can use this technology to build general-purpose tools. I think this is appealing because it allowed you to solve more than one problem. If you want a computer to do something else, you just reprogram it. This project is very similar in that we can tell chemistry what to do."

Humans and other organisms already have complex networks of nano-sized molecules that help to regulate cells and keep the body in check. Yet designing synthetic systems that behave like biological ones could support the body's natural functions. In order to accomplish this, though, researchers need a system to create synthetic DNA molecules that vary according to their specific functions.

The new method isn't ready for the medical field. However, it is still a huge leap forward as far as research goes. In the future, it could be used to make molecules that self-assemble within cells and serve as "smart" sensors. These could then be embedded in a cell, then programmed to detect abnormalities and respond as needed.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.