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.”
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: 100 CircuitPython Community Libraries, a New Arduino UNO and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi