Human beings are, in a sense, living computers built from the cell up. Is it too far-fetched to think we could build computers that way?

A team of scientists in Germany, including Bezu Teschome and Artur Erbe of Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, are working toward that goal. They've found a way to coat DNA-based nanowires in gold and conduct electricity. Their tiny, proof-of-concept wires could lead to DNA circuits and genetic computers that self-assemble from the molecule up.

"The main advantage here is the complexity you can create on the nanoscale with these circuits," Erbe told Seeker.

Such complexity is possible thanks to a technique, called DNA origami, the scientists used to construct the nanowire. Invented in the United States about ten years ago, DNA origami involves combining a single strand of DNA in a solution with multiple shorter strands designed to bind at different sections along the single strand.

Controlling how the shorter strands bind is done by adding certain ions to the solution and adjusting the temperature. Fine-tuning these and other variables can produce two- and three-dimensional objects of virtually any shape.

"In this case, we assembled a nanotube out of DNA," Teschome told Seeker.

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