Scientists have developed a facile approach for the assembly of biological nanotubes using only DNA templates and proteins from the shell of Cucumber Mosaic Virus. 

The fruitful collaboration between the National Centre for NanoScience & Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, both in Beijing, China and the University of Leeds, UK, allowed Dongsheng Liu and colleagues to use double-stranded DNA as short as 50 base pairs to assemble uniform nanotubes several micrometers long with a diameter of only 17 nm. 

This discovery has wide potential as a new method for the scalable preparation of novel biological nanostructures as well as for efficient gene delivery carriers. 'Such a highly efficient self-assembly process is ideal for the fabrication of novel nanostructures in an economical and reliable way,' says Liu. 

However, there are many challenges that remain such as how to control the assembly process to acquire the desirable length, how to place the starting point at the right site and how to control the growth direction. All these questions need to be addressed before the preparation of three dimension biological nanostructures. 

In addition to addressing the above issues in the future, Liu wants to 'help the assembled structures penetrate the cell membrane, which could further develop into an efficient gene delivery method.' 

Kathleen Too