Here’s an article from PhysOrg saying something that has been said on this blog for years. The experimenters were working with gold crystals, trying to build different structures. Here’s some of what they write in this summary article:
“He likens the process to building a house. Starting with basic materials such as bricks, wood, siding, stone and shingles, a construction team can build many different types of houses out of the same building blocks. In the Northwestern work, the DNA controls where the building blocks (the gold nanoparticles) are positioned in the final crystal structure, arranging the particles in a functional way. The DNA does all the heavy lifting so the researchers don’t have to.”