WIRED Staff
Science

Slideshow: Building Blocks for a Tiny World

Ribonucleic acid, or RNA, is no longer just a slave to DNA's commands. It may be the strongest building material yet for making nanostructures. By Kristen Philipkoski.
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An atomic force microscope image shows RNA built by Dr. Peixuan Guo and his colleagues at Purdue. (A) Single strands fold into "checkmark" shapes. (B) Sets of two strands form rod shapes. (C) Sets of three strands form triangle shapes. (D) Multi-strand arrays form bundles.Peixuan Guo, Purdue University

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This three-dimensional structure of a an RNA nanomotor is found in a bacterial virus called phi29. A Purdue lab built a synthetic version of the nanomotor using six copies of RNA, represented by the colors in the diagram. The central channel is the path that DNA follows during replication of the virus.

Peixuan Guo, Purdue University