• Structural Self-Replication Based on DNA Could Create New Materials
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[QUOTE]One of the hallmarks of living things is self-replication, the ability to make new copies of biological structures. Scientists have harnessed this ability in several ways, using DNA and viruses to organize materials for things like solar panels. But inducing artificial self-replication, which would enable new types of self-fabricating materials, has proven more difficult. Now researchers at New York University say they’ve taken a step in that direction, building a complex artificial system that can self-replicate. The researchers started with artificial DNA tile motifs, which are tiny arrangements of DNA. Just like the base pairs of DNA, the tiles each serve as a letter, each of which pairs with another specific letter. DNA’s A-T and G-C pairs form the molecule’s double helix. In this case, the tiles were made of artificial bent triple-helix molecules, each containing three DNA double helices. The researchers wanted to use this motif to seed the creation of a new structure, which would be based on the rules established by the seed. To do this, they created a sequence of seven tiles, or seven “words,” to serve as the seed, and placed the molecules in a solution. There it matched up with complementary tiles, and assembled into a daughter array. Then the molecules were heated up, separating the daughter tiles from the seed. The process started again, with the daughter array matching with new complementary tiles and assembling a granddaughter array — and so on. The second-generation tiles reproduced the same sequence as the seed word, without any enzymes or other biological triggers, according to the NYU team. It’s worth noting that the seed word was pretty much arbitrary — so the work shows that self-replicating materials can be created from any seed composition, said Paul Chaikin, an NYU physics professor and one of the study's co-authors, said in a university news release. This is a long way from being used in materials fabrication, of course, but the work shows it is possible. “Our findings raise the tantalizing prospect that we may one day be able to realize self-replicating materials with various patterns or useful functions,” the researchers write. The paper is published in the journal Nature.[/QUOTE] Source: [url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/structural-self-replication-based-dna-could-create-new-materials[/url]
That's so amazing.
[IMG]http://www.somewhereville.com/rescv/nanorex_dnaposter_0_33_scaled.jpg[/IMG]
Eudoxia as always with his awesome science-nobody-understands posts
[QUOTE=Atlascore;32837916]The potential to make self-replicating materials? Terminators are closer to reality than ever before.[/QUOTE] Not Terminators, actually. More like a step forward for nanotech. Also, would self-replicating nanotech be classifiable as a new form of life?
[IMG]http://images.wikia.com/stargate/images/3/31/Replicator.JPG[/IMG] ?
[QUOTE=barttool;32838052]Eudoxia as always with his awesome science-nobody-understands posts[/QUOTE] It's just twisting DNA into cool shapes. It's cool that this process doesn't need an enzyme. Perhaps a key step in how DNA macromolecules formed spontaneously in the first place.
[QUOTE=Atlascore;32837916]Terminators are closer to reality than ever before.[/QUOTE]Terminators have solid endoskeletal frames. Do your research.
Self-repairing robot cops, here we come. Also this would be great for self repairing clothing for soldiers and people that always tear their clothes up alot.
Yeah, that'd be very useful. And if combined with human biology, maybe nanite-aided healing would be on the cards, regrowing one's arm by consuming compatible materials. That'd be even cooler if it used metals to do it; if I had such augs i'd literally be able to become an iron man. Speaking of Iron Man, time for a daily dose of epicness. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ahwjGWTl7g[/media]
Funfact: The DNA Double Helix was discovered by Francis Crick while he was tripping on LSD.
I read this as "Structural Self-Republican Based on DNA Could Create New Materials" :v:
Concerning self-replicating fibers for clothing, how would you program the material to stop replicating once the clothing item is as it should be... wouldn't it keep on replicating to become an ever-growing blob of fiber?
[QUOTE=Atlascore;32845614]I was talking about the terminator from the second movie that was basically indestructible.[/QUOTE] That thing (T-1000 I think) was not self-replicating. It was a model made of mimetic poly-alloy. If it lost a piece, the pieces reconnected and reconstituted the Terminator - it didn't replicate itself to rebuild what it lost.
[QUOTE=yuki;32842437]Funfact: The DNA Double Helix was discovered by Francis Crick while he was tripping on LSD.[/QUOTE] That's actually not true, it was taken from an article and very loosely interpreted. Crick never once admitted or advocated the use of LSD. I can't seem to find any text actually quoting him saying that he did LSD and it was responsible for his discovery. Not that it really matters anyway, I've just always been curious if it was crap or not.
[QUOTE=Aetna;32846398]That's actually not true, it was taken from an article and very loosely interpreted. Crick never once admitted or advocated the use of LSD. I can't seem to find any text actually quoting him saying that he did LSD and it was responsible for his discovery. Not that it really matters anyway, I've just always been curious if it was crap or not.[/QUOTE] [quote]. In the case of LSD, for example, you only need 150 micrograms to have all these funny experiences, you see. It's minute. And that's because they fit into special places, these little molecules, these drugs which you take. They fit into special places in these other molecules. They've been tailored to do that.[/quote] [url]http://www.intuition.org/txt/crick2.htm[/url] An entire discussion with Crick about neuroscience and psychedelics. He doesn't openly admit using LSD here, though, but the man's a damn genius for sure. Also: [quote]Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize. Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in the short stories The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.[/quote] [quote]'Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.[/quote] [url]http://www.mayanmajix.com/art1699.html[/url] Could be true, could be false, he never suggested anything in either direction, himself. Still, it's an interesting tidbit to say the least.
[quote]Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.[/quote] Then he is a liar because he was working off the triple-helix conception of DNA like seriously what the fuck that's like saying you visualized the total synthesis of a huge complex pharmaceutical do you think he went to the scientific community and said "well this triple helix idea is wrong because I hallucinated a double helix and uh... well let's disregard the many legitimate reasons that exist" those sources are less reputable than facepunch itself
[QUOTE=DeEz;32840584][IMG]http://images.wikia.com/stargate/images/3/31/Replicator.JPG[/IMG] ?[/QUOTE] Someone call the Asgard...
This could (far as I understand) save a lot of endangered plants, maybe even animals. It's either that or Resident Evil.
antichrists
[QUOTE=Contag;32856445]Then he is a liar because he was working off the triple-helix conception of DNA like seriously what the fuck that's like saying you visualized the total synthesis of a huge complex pharmaceutical do you think he went to the scientific community and said "well this triple helix idea is wrong because I hallucinated a double helix and uh... well let's disregard the many legitimate reasons that exist" those sources are less reputable than facepunch itself[/QUOTE] LSD's a helluva drug.
[QUOTE=Contag;32856445]Then he is a liar because he was working off the triple-helix conception of DNA like seriously what the fuck that's like saying you visualized the total synthesis of a huge complex pharmaceutical do you think he went to the scientific community and said "well this triple helix idea is wrong because I hallucinated a double helix and uh... well let's disregard the many legitimate reasons that exist" those sources are less reputable than facepunch itself[/QUOTE] I don't see that it's impossible that he had been working on his idea for some time, and had a lot if not all of the pieces already but was just failing to put them in all the correct places in his mind. One could say that he probably tripped his fucking balls off, while his mind went nuts he thought of DNA or whatever and started to put the pieces together in the correct order. Either that or I'm talking out my ass.
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