A nanoprinter for cheaper diagnostics

Using strands of DNA as movable type, scientists have created a miniaturized printing technique for mass-producing medical-diagnostic chips.

In the technique, developed by Francesco Stellacci of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his colleagues, scientists attach thousands or millions of customized DNA strands to a gold chip in a specific pattern. This becomes the master chip.

To mass-produce DNA chips, the researchers dunk the master into a solution containing sequences of DNA that are complementary to the strands on the master and are capped with a chemical that binds to gold.