Scientists believe we will soon have DNA-based robots in the medical industry that will help deliver medicine inside our bodies and detect the presence of deadly pathogens before they can even cause any harm! Doesn't that sound like something not that believable?

In a research paper published on April 19, 2021, in the journal "Nature Materials", researchers from the Ohio State University, led by former engineering doctoral student Chao-Min Huang, revealed a new software named MagicDNA.

This software helps researchers design ways of taking tiny strands of DNA and combining them into complex structures with parts like rotors and hinges that can accomplish a variety of tasks. We have known this procedure for some time now, but researchers would require to go through many manual steps before the development of this software, which can now be done in just a few seconds.

Previously, the process had a lot of complications as the researchers could only make devices that had a limited number of individual components attached to them, but with the help of the software they can add up to 20 components that are much easier to control. And that's not it, the designs created using the software are also 3-Dimensional, which of course the older designs were not.

The creation of the software is a huge step towards the ability to design nanodevices that can perform complex actions. Researchers can now take individual strands of DNA and decide how to organize them into the structures they want, allowing precise control over the nano-robot.

Additionally, it allows the researchers to look at simulations based on how the designed nano-robot will work making it easier for them to tweak the robot’s performance based on the observations in the simulation.

Anjelica Kucinich, a doctoral student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State, led the researchers in making many nanostructures designed by the software. These included a small robot arm that could pick smaller items and a small airplane-like structure that was just 100 nanometers in size!

Carlos Castro, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State, expects that the software will be put to more use in universities and research labs over the next few years, and there will be a further expanded commercial interest in DNA nanotechnology shortly. He also thinks that in the next 5 to 10 years there will be more commercial applications of DNA nanodevices.

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