DNA, normally the building block of life, is being used to build engineered nano-structures instead. The double helix that forms when two strands of DNA intertwine resembles a twisted ladder, in which the paired bases form the rungs. Crucially, a base on one side of the ladder will only pair up with a specific partner on the other leg.
University of Oxford physicist Andrew Turberfield and his colleagues have exploited this pairing to build a different kind of structure. They designed four single strands of synthetic DNA on which base pairs were strategically placed to zip the strands together into…
