Nature | Self-replication of information-bearing nanoscale patterns. DNA molecules provide what is probably the most iconic example of self-replication—the ability of a system to replicate, or make copies of, itself. In living cells the process is mediated by enzymes and occurs autonomously, with the number of replicas increasing exponentially over time without the need for external manipulation. Self-replication has also been implemented with synthetic systems, including RNA enzymes designed to undergo self-sustained exponential amplification1, 2, 3, 4, 5. An exciting next step would be to use self-replication in materials fabrication, which requires robust and general systems capable of copying and amplifying functional materials or structures. Here we report a first development in this direction, using DNA tile motifs that can recognize and bind complementary tiles in a pre-programmed fashion. We first design tile motifs so they form a seven-tile seed sequence; then use the seeds to instruct the formation of a first generation of complementary seven-tile daughter sequences; and finally use the daughters to instruct the formation of seven-tile granddaughter sequences that are identical to the initial seed sequences. Considering that DNA is a functional material that can organize itself and other molecules into useful structures6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, our findings raise the tantalizing prospect that we may one day be able to realize self-replicating materials with various patterns or useful 
1 comments:
What a battle this has become and will become, yet, the science is here
But with all
my computers, I'm still a human being, and my only possible perspective is a
human one. I feel that presently we are somewhere in the middle of the road. We
know far more than the Greeks did, or more even than we did fifty years ago. At
the end of the nineteenth century, many physicists were already worried that
the twentieth-century physicist would be out of work, because everything would
have been discovered and the structure of science would have been completed.
Only a few bricks were missing from the smokestack, and then there would be
nothing left for them to discover. But now we know it's quite different. In my
brief lifespan of sixty years man's basic cosmological views have been
revolutionized. Connected with this question of the birth of the universe is
the concept of an ultimate being. I don't know whether, at this exact moment in
history, we have really acquired the final truth. And thus I believe that
humanity will change its cosmological and cosmogonic views several times over
again. The ruling view today is the big bang. Whether this is the end I would
doubt. An Interview with
Stanislaw Lem
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