Skip to main content

Scientists paint the world’s tiniest ‘Mona Lisa’ using strands of DNA

Fractal Assembly
As a Renaissance polymath skilled in painting, science, and engineering (to name just a few of his interests), we think Leonardo da Vinci would have been impressed by a recent project carried out by researchers at the California Institute of Technology. They have taken his iconic Mona Lisa painting, probably the world’s most famous piece of art, and reproduced it at nanoscale using strands of DNA. Sized just 700 nanometers in width, it’s the world’s tiniest ever re-creation of the “Mona Lisa” — which originally measures at 2.53 by 1.74 feet.

“We developed a series of rules for assembling simpler DNA nanostructures into more complex superstructures,” Philip Petersen, a graduate student in the department of biology and biological engineering, told Digital Trends. “Further, [we] demonstrated the applicability of those rules by creating unprecedentedly large DNA ‘canvases’ capable of having arbitrary patterns drawn upon them.”

Lulu Qian, an assistant professor of bioengineering, described it to us as being a bit like a “display for molecules.” There are 8,704 pixels in all, each one about six nanometers apart. These pixels can then be turned on or off to create any pattern. A paper discussing the work was recently published in the journal Nature, titled “Fractal assembly of micrometre-scale DNA origami arrays with arbitrary patterns.”

Image used with permission by copyright holder

While this is, in some ways, more of a fancy tech demo than practical work, it could nonetheless have real-world applications — such as the further development of macroscale devices, which can be precisely controlled at the nanoscale.

“Using the fractal assembly principle, I would like to build a 3D printer that prints billions of devices in parallel and with nanoscale precision,” Grigory Tikhomirov, a senior postdoctoral student who worked on the project, said. “This 3D printing will allow streamlined fabrication of programmable devices from any non-DNA material with arbitrary shape and size in an affordable way, thus overcoming several major challenges in DNA nanotechnology — such as the instability of DNA, limited size, and high cost of DNA-based materials.”

For now, however, it’s best just to marvel at another amazing example of what is possible with modern science. As if the Mona Lisa needed another reason to smirk!

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Read more