Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/DNA nanotechnology/archive1

Draft of lead

My shorthand version of what the article covers: 1. DNA nanotech makes stuff from DNA. 2. DNA is normally found in living cells. 3. It binds together in interesting ways. 4. This makes it a useful engineering material for nanoscale devices. 5. People first thought of doing this in the 1980s. 6. It turns out to be really hard. 7. A lot of designs and proof-of-concepts were made in the last 30 years. 8. Many more labs have started work now. 9. Now it's useful for blue-sky research. 10. Eventually it will be able to do medical and electronics applications.

Draft lead:

DNA nanotechnology is a branch of nanotechnology that specialises in the design and manufacture of tiny artificial nucleic acid structures for technological uses. The same structural properties that make nucleic acids such as DNA useful as the carrier of genetic information in living cells make it an ideal non-biological engineering material: due to the specific base pairing rules of nucleic acids, only complementary portions of nucleic acid strands can bind together, and they form strong, rigid double helix molecules. In DNA nanotechnology, the base sequences of sets of nucleic acid strands are precisely set through the technique of nucleic acid design. These strands then self-assemble into a complex nanoscale structure of the desired shape. DNA is the dominant material used, but structures incorporating other nucleic acids such as RNA and peptide nucleic acid (PNA) have also been constructed, leading to occasional use of the alternate name for the field of nucleic acid nanotechnology.

The conceptual foundation for DNA nanotechnology was first laid out by Nadrian Seeman in the early 1980s. Slow and steady progress in the field led to the creation of static structures such as two- and three-dimensional crystal lattices, nanotubes, polyhedra, and arbitrary shapes formed by the method of DNA origami. After many of these proof of principle experiments, and the creation of functional structures such as molecular machines and and DNA computers, the field began to attract widespread interest in the early to mid 2000s. It is beginning to be used as a tool to solve fundamental problems in structural biology and biophysics, including applications in crystallography and spectroscopy for finding the structure of proteins. Potential future applications include molecular scale electronics and nanomedicine.

Iridia (talk) 01:52, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

review placement

When an article is at FAC, reviews are generally conducted on the FAC page for transparency. - Dank (push to talk) 04:41, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Been asked me to put them on talk before because of length (by delegates). Plus this also allows me to do sections. See Manhattan Project for an example. I know Carch and Christie have experimented with same. I would think any system that is thoughtful makes sense (even an uploaded pdf). But if someone makes some Wiki rule thing out of it, I will just pass. It is a lot of work just to engage with the piece. TCO (Reviews needed) 05:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I misunderstood, I thought you meant the article talk page ... yes, the FAC talk page is fine for a review, as long as you point people here. - Dank (push to talk) 05:23, 11 January 2012 (UTC)