DNA Antenna Dust

This project is a combination of three separate advances made in recent years and involve the application of bio-nano-technology with electro-magnetism. The three advances are: DNA origami, DNA coating and nano-dusts. 

The first, DNA origami, is a new exciting field which enables to construct 3D objects with DNA. Nowadays, people can write the DNA code in the computer and get the DNA in a tube as a commercialized product. Furthermore, there were huge advancements in the understanding of DNA folding: DNA, while being a 1D strand, sometimes folds and creates angles due to unique sequences of its underlying G-C-T-A. Taken together, if one knows how a specific DNA folds, and one can write any DNA desired, one can create any shape out of DNA. There are CAD programs that transform any 3D object to its underlying DNA sequence.

The second field is DNA coating. It is older than DNA origami and grants the ability to coat DNA strands with different materials. Notably, it has been done with metals and more specifically with gold. This ability to coat DNA, and the unique ability of the DNA double strands to be constructed into networks of chains, has enabled the development of DNA-based electronic circuits.

The third field is nano-dusts, which grants the ability to create millions of tiny engineered particles that can be spread over a large area and serve a greater purpose. Some applications include using particles that hold sensors, thus creating a large distributed sensor array. A new exciting application is neural dust, which is "spread" over the brain and can transmit the local EM field via acoustic waves.

I suggest to combine these three fields to create the following apparatus. By designing a unique DNA origami that is coated by metals, one can have the complete freedom of engineering nano-antennas that reflect electro-magnetic waves. If millions of these are created and spread over a very large area, one can actually have a huge antenna array made out of nano-antennas. The operation can obviously be optimized by a computer to find the best 3D configuration of the DNA-origami-gold-coated antennas and the best distribution over such large spaces. The benefits of this suggested antenna array lie on its extremely cheap construction, due to advances in DNA synthesis; robustness, since even if you lose a large percent of the nano-antennas, the large array can still function; and configurability, since one can attempt many shapes and distributions until one gets the appropriate antenna array.