On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
As a means for sensing proteins and other molecular tasks, researchers have managed to link nanoparticles to DNA. Now investigators at the University of Dortmund in Germany have figured out how to unlink them under normal physiological conditions, potentially offering a controllable way to construct complicated nanostructures or devices that interact with the body. The researchers synthesized batches of two different single DNA strands, then attached each strand to its own 20-nanometer- wide gold particle. A longer third strand of DNA binds to both shorter sequences, linking the gold particles together. The trick is that the third strand has an extra region that hangs loose. In the December 3 Angewandte Chemie International Edition, they describe how they separated the gold particles by introducing a fourth strand that binds to the third strand's loose end and unzips it from the gold particles; reconnection simply meant introducing the naked third strand again.
Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism
Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.
When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.
Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber
