James Canary
New York University, NY·Chemistry
Computers store and process information as sequences of symbols, but living systems store information in physical objects: molecules whose three-dimensional shapes determine what they can bind and what they can do. This project explores the boundary between those two worlds, treating DNA as programmable "software" and molecular geometry as the "wetware" it controls.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
Biophysics
- Topics
DNA nanotechnology
structural DNA
tensegrity triangle
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Develop mathematical and computational tools that distinguish molecules by their three-dimensional shape and structure, and use them to predict and constrain which topologies DNA motifs can adopt.
- Identify the structural features of small 3D DNA motifs, built on the self-assembling tensegrity triangle, that allow information to be encoded in molecular shape, verifying structures by X-ray and related methods.
- Design and characterize quaternary DNA structures with defined chirality, or handedness, to test whether shape-level rules control how individual motifs combine into larger units.
- Construct periodic, hierarchical and fractal DNA arrays that require supramolecular assembly algorithms rather than sequence-level design alone.
- Prototype DNA-based optical materials capable of performing computation with light and reporting the result optically.
More about the research
The question is whether shape itself can be used as a programming language at the nanometer scale, so that building blocks assemble into complex structures according to rules written into their geometry rather than only into their sequence.
Why it matters
Programming matter by shape rather than only by sequence could yield self-assembling materials built to specification at nanometer precision, along with optical materials that compute and report using light. Such capabilities could inform future biocomputing devices, information storage and optical communication components, and the mathematical tools for distinguishing molecular shapes would be useful well beyond DNA.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kraig Wheeler
Whitworth University, WA·Chemistry
Synthesize families of acyclic and cyclic dipeptides and extended peptides by solid-phase peptide synthesis, systematically varying molecular shape and pendant functional groups.
Virgil Percec
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Chemistry
Explain the principles by which polymers and supramolecular assemblies self-organize into Frank-Kasper phases, complex packing structures known from metals and viruses, along with their orientational memory.
Adam Roddy
New York University, NY·Plant Science & Agriculture
Develop image-analysis methods to quantify the three-dimensional diversity of cell and tissue structure across real leaves, generating the measurements needed to constrain a developmental model.
The school
New York University: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 540 research doctorates a year.
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