Ever wanted to draw at the nanoscale? Well, now there’s an app for that. It’s called Perdix.
The free, open-source software, designed by a team of scientists from MIT and Arizona State University, lets anyone create 2D nanostructures using DNA strands. It’s a fun tool for anyone to play around with, but it could also have fascinating applications in quantum computing and photonics.
Perdix changes this, making biological “drawing” available to just about anyone. The software can automatically take any polygonal design drawn in a CAD program and transform it into a mesh that can be printed using synthetic DNA sequences. According to Mark Bathe, associate professor of biological engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study, this work “allows anyone to draw literally any 2D shape and convert it into DNA origami automatically.”
The future of biological design is here, and it’s as simple as downloading an app. You can download it for Windows or OS X here.