For an introduction to DNA origami and our research, watch the Watson Lecture on “DNA origami: Folded DNA as a Building Material for Molecular Devices”:
Some more thoughts and information about DNA origami can be found on our website and in a few more talks:
“DNA folding, in detail”, TED, February 2008
“Beyond Watson and Crick: programming DNA self-assembly towards integration with nanotelectronics”, Stanford, February 2011
“Casting spells with DNA”, TED, March 2007
We are devising new sensors that can perform DNA and protein detection by using DNA origami as the sensing element. This allows us to tune and optimize the geometry of the sensor in order to accommodate a wide range of analytes and design the structure to optimize signal gain. Electrochemically active molecules can be incorporated in such a device and enable electrical transduction, creating a single-molecule sensing chip that could be used in-vivo and connected to electronics, giving the user a final readout value.
Importantly, there is a long list of people who do work on DNA nanotechnology. Among them the inventor of DNA nanotechnology Ned Seeman at NYU, William Shih at Harvard, Milan Stojanovic and Darko Stefanovic at Columbia and UNM, Hao Yan at Arizona State University, Thom LaBean at NCSU, Andrew Turberfield at Oxford, Hiroshi Sugiyama and Masayuki Endo at Kyoto University, Bernie Yurke and others in the Nanoscale Materials and Devices Lab at Boise State University, Hendrik Dietz, Fritz Simmel, and Tim Liedl with their three groups in Munich, and many others.
You can contact Paul for more information and a more complete list.