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Glassed-in DNA makes the ultimate time capsule

Year 2015 face_with_colon_three

IF YOU must preserve messages for people in the far future to read, Blu-ray discs and USB sticks are no good. For real long-term storage, you want a DNA time capsule.

Just 1 gram of DNA is theoretically capable of holding 455 exabytes – enough for all the data held by Google, Facebook and every other major tech company, with room to spare. It’s also incredibly durable: DNA has been extracted and sequenced from 700,000-year-old horse bones. But conditions have to be right for it to last.

A rhythmically pulsing leaf-spring DNA-origami nanoengine that drives a passive follower

DNA nano machine year 2023.

An autonomous DNA-origami nanomachine powered by the chemical energy of DNA-templated RNA-transcription-consuming nucleoside triphosphates as fuel performs rhythmic pulsations is demonstrated. In combination with a passive follower, the nanomachine acts as a mechanical driver with molecular precision.

Single-photon teleportation achieved between distant quantum dots for the first time

An international research team involving Paderborn University has achieved a crucial breakthrough on the road to a quantum internet. For the first time ever, the polarization state of a single photon emitted from a quantum dot was successfully teleported to another physically separated quantum dot.

This means that the properties of one photon can be transmitted to another via teleportation. This is a particularly vital step for future quantum communication networks. For example, the scientists used a 270m free-space optical link for their experiments. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

P-Rex1 limits the agonist-induced internalization of GPCRs independently of its Rac-GEF activity

P-Rex1 activates Rac downstream of GPCRs to regulate processes ranging from innate immunity to neuronal plasticity, its deregulation contributing to cancer. Here, Baker et al. show that P-Rex1 also controls GPCR trafficking, limiting agonist-induced GPCR internalization through an adapter function. Thus, P-Rex1 promotes GPCR responses in a dual manner.

Physicists overcome fundamental limitation of acoustic levitation

Using sound to get objects to float works well if a single particle is levitated, but it causes multiple particles to collapse into a clump in mid-air. Physicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) have now found a way to keep them apart using charge. Their findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could find applications in materials science, robotics, and microengineering.

Who hasn’t dreamed of overcoming gravity and getting objects to hover above ground?

In 2013, Scott Waitukaitis, now an assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), became interested in using acoustic levitation as a tool to study various physical phenomena. At that time, only a handful of research groups were using this technique for similar purposes.

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