{"id":9138,"date":"2025-10-24T04:24:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T04:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=9138"},"modified":"2025-10-24T04:24:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T04:24:25","slug":"let-a-thousand-dna-flowers-bloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=9138","title":{"rendered":"Let a Thousand DNA Flowers Bloom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By KIM BELLARD<\/p>\n

When I saw a headline about \u201cDNA flowers,\u201d I was nonplused. I mean: aren\u2019t all flowers made out of DNA, like every living thing on our planet? Well, it turns out that the DNA flowers are actually soft robots \u2013 make that nanobots \u2013 so my interest was definitely piqued.<\/p>\n

The DNA flowers are out of the Freeman Lab<\/a> at the University of North Carolina, led by Dr. Ronit Freeman, and the research about them was just published in Nature Nanotechnology<\/em> with the less sexy title \u201cReversible metamorphosis of hierarchical DNA-organic crystal<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0Had I seen that before \u201cDNA flowers\u201d I probably would have passed it over, so I\u2019m glad someone has an eye towards marketing.<\/p>\n

Designer Daniel Burham famously said: \u201cMake no little plans,\u201d and I kind of think he\u2019d like Dr. Freeman. Her bio says she has formal training in computer science, chemistry, nanotechnology, and regenerative medicine (plus even ballroom dancing, if you\u2019re counting), and she probably needs all that training, because her primary interest is \u201cin supramolecular self-assembly, a field where common biological materials like DNA and proteins are seen not simply as information carriers, but also as tunable structural materials for next-generation sensors, nano robots, drug breakthroughs, and clinical tools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accordingly, what the Lab has done now is to combine DNA with inorganic materials to allow them to respond to their environment. Professor Freeman says<\/a>: \u201cWe take inspiration from nature\u2019s designs, like blooming flowers or growing tissue, and translate them into technology that could one day think, move, and adapt on its own,\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Freman Lab prides itself on \u201cbioinspired technologies,\u201d the purpose of which is: \u201cWe engineer living and synthetic materials to accelerate healthier outcomes for global communities.\u201d The website talks about \u201cbuilding block designs.\u201d featuring hierarchical self-assembly, temporal structural reconfiguration, and adaptive behavior.<\/p>\n

Hence, DNA flowers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The flowers are actually shaped like flowers, although they are microscopic, and what makes them both interesting and potentially useful is that the various strands of DNA allow them to move, open or close, or trigger chemical reactions, based on environmental cues like temperature, acidity, or chemical signals. The DNA sequences guide nanoparticles to organize into complex structures, which can reverse shape as desired. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople would love to have smart capsules that would automatically activate medication when it detects disease and stops when it is healed. In principle, this could be possible with our shapeshifting materials,\u201d said Professor Freeman. \u201cIn the future, swallowable or implantable shape-changing flowers could be designed to deliver a targeted dose of drugs, perform a biopsy, or clear a blood clot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah, I\u2019d love that, and I bet you would too.<\/p>\n

The team acknowledges that the technology is in the early stages, but see a future where, say, a DNA flower is injected into a cancer patient, in whom it travels to a tumor, whose acidity causes the petals to release a medication or even take a tiny tissue sample. When the tumor is gone the DNA flower would deactivate until\/unless new environmental triggers reactivate it. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Thinking beyond healthcare, the team sees their creations helping to clean up environmental contamination, or as a great digital storage device \u2014 up to two trillion gigabytes in just a teaspoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fact that the DNA flowers can sense and respond to their environment makes the team believe these are a major step forward in bridging the gap between living systems and machines. We\u2019re going to see more of that in the rest of the 21st century.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The Freeman lab has some big ambitions. It wants to discover \u201cnew and creative means of detecting viruses, treating illnesses, effectively targeting and delivering payloads, and interfacing with natural biology.\u201d Four key ways it is attacking that goal are:<\/p>\n

Sensing<\/strong>: \u201cdeveloping rapid testing technologies that are easy to use, location independent, robust in design, and cost effective for production.\u201d: \u201cIn recognizing, respecting and studying natural mechanisms, we are able to mimic them in order to develop effective biotherapies and advance biomedical engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biomimicry<\/strong>: \u201cIn recognizing, respecting and studying natural mechanisms, we are able to mimic them in order to develop effective biotherapies and advance biomedical engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapeutics<\/strong>: \u201cThis can involve administering an external drug, developing a safe and effective means to deliver that drug to the desired site, or developing a means to program natural biology to reverse the effects of a disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soft matter<\/strong>: \u201cSoft Matter is an umbrella term for sciences concerned with topics ranging from textile materials, to fluid mechanics, granular distribution, biological materials and much more.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

All very cool, all thinking about a future that is different than the past, so kudos to them. DNA flowers aren\u2019t the first thing the Freeman Lab has done, and I\u2019m pretty sure they won\u2019t be the last. I can\u2019t wait to see what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n

And you though Bill Belichick went to UNC for the football\u2026<\/p>\n

Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented\u00a0<\/em>Tincture.io<\/em><\/a>, and now regular THCB contributor<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By KIM BELLARD When I saw a headline about \u201cDNA flowers,\u201d I was nonplused. I mean: aren\u2019t all flowers made out of DNA, like every living thing on our planet? Well, it turns out that the DNA flowers are actually soft robots \u2013 make that nanobots \u2013 so my interest was definitely piqued. The DNA…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}