"DNA is the queen of all molecules." The winner of Science Slam talks about molecular origami

Each year, the Petersburg newspaper "Paper" is conducted by Science Slam - a scientific stand -up, in which scientists give fascinating lectures in front of a large audience and compete in who will talk better and more interestingly about very complex things.

At the last Science Slam, the winner was the graduate student of the Faculty of Bioenginery and Bioinformatics of Moscow State University. Lomonosova Arthur Zalevsky. He explained what the LEGO designer has in common and what molecular origami is.

Zalevsky said that a lot of information is recorded in the DNA molecule. For example, it depends on it whether a person can turn his tongue into a tube. The scientist hopes that someday bioengines will be able to hack a DNA chain and attach the sixth finger to people or change the color of the eyes, but this area raises many ethical questions. Thanks to nucleotides and the principle of complementarity, the DNA chain can be turned into any shape. Chains can be turned into a semblance of molecular machines-a propeller or a reactor, and in the future even in a dream of science fiction writers-nano-robots, which can be launched into a human circulation system.

The next battle of scientists will be held on May 13 at the Red Moscow Club. The best scientists in Moscow and St. Petersburg will perform on it - they will talk about aviation security, network analysis of data, a large Adron Collider, Kamchatka cyanobacteria, and whether science can predict a tendency to suicide and profile in VKontakte.