First photo of DNA in all its twisted glory!

Nearly sixty years ago, James Watson and Francis Crick figured out what DNA - that mega-long molecule containing the blueprints of organic life - looked like. All they had at the time was deduction through observation and x-ray crystallography (don't worry, it took me awhile to learn how that worked, too!) to figure out the double-helix arrangement. But they had no way of actually seeing the darned thing.

Now for the first time, scientists have been able to visually image DNA using a novel technique with electron microscopy and a teeny tiny "bed of nails". Hit the above link for more about how Enzo di Fabrizio and his fellow boffins at Italian Institute of Technology pulled it off.

As for the first real picture of DNA, behold:

Photo credit: Enzo di Fabrizio/Italian Institute of Technology

WOW! It's the double-helix determined by Watson and Crick... but look at how tightly packed that thing is!! Doesn't look as spacious as those colorful twisty ladders we all saw in our high school biology labs, does it?

Amazing, that that much information about the design of you, me, every person on the planet and all other known forms of life on Earth, takes up so tiny an amount of space within the nucleus of a cell. I heard years ago that if you took all the DNA of your body and strung the individual molecules end-on-end, that it would reach from the Earth to the Sun.

Looking at that picture, I'm finally believing it.

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Cellphones adapted into microscopes (Is there an app for that?)

Using software he developed and about $10 of standard off-the-shelf parts, a solid-thinkin' dude named Aydogan Ozcan has converted camera-equipped cellphones into rather powerful microscopes.

When set up with the package, a cellphone like the Samsung model in the photo can image blood cells and bacteria. The phones can then send the data over a wireless network or be connected via USB to laptop computers. The potential for such devices are vast, considering that a doctor equipped with such a cellphone could diagnose malaria or other illnesses in very remote locations. What's particularly interesting from a technical perspective is that Ozcan's 'scope does NOT use lenses for magnification at all! It achieves microscopy by using the phone's camera to measure the scattering/interference pattern from light-emitting diodes shining on the sample. In other words, the package creates a magnified hologram of the sample being studied.

Very, very cool. Aydogan Ozcan has already started a company to further develop and market his work. No doubt it will be successful.

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It's a pentacene molecule

Pentacene, chemical formula C₂₂H₁₄ and the above image is such a big deal because it's the first time ever that photographs of actual molecules have been obtained.

Mash here for the story on how IBM's scientists conquered a decades-long technical challenge.

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