Painting with DNA

By controlling how complementary strands of DNA bond together to form duplexes, researchers at the University of Vienna in Austria, have found a way to ‘paint’ with DNA on a microarray canvas.

To create the colour, short strands of DNA were linked to fluorescent markers that emitted either red, green or blue light before being matched to a long complementary DNA strand bound to a surface. The researchers were able to fine-tune the stability of the duplex by removing bases of the DNA strand at pre-defined position to vary the intensity of each colour; the lower the stability, the darker the shade.