ABSTRACT
In this book we’re going to look at two lines of research using DNA. The first story is the manipulation of DNA as a design tool for future technologies, and the second story
looks back four billion years at how DNA itself may have first formed. Surprisingly, perhaps, neither account focuses on DNA in its biological context. In the first case, the emphasis is on synthetic DNA and using the properties that make DNA such a great molecule for bio-inspired nanoscale control of the structure of matter. The second line of work uses the materials science study of short lengths of DNA in an attempt to understand one of life’s most basic features, the linear polymer structure of its genetic material. Later on we’ll see other similarities in the two tales. For now, we’ll just say that the stories have common beginnings. The first started in a pub in Albany, New York, in 1980 and the other in a bar in Milan, Italy, in 1989.
