Life is defined by its borders. Without membranes, the chemistry of a cell would dissolve into chaos. For decades, synthetic biologists faced a brutal trade-off: build rigid, virus-scale DNA cages with atomic precision—or large, messy lipid vesicles with no programmability.

A landmark 2025 study from the Technical University of Munich, published in Nature Materials, shatters that barrier. By merging DNA origami precision with lipid-like fluidity, researchers created “Dipids”—DNA-lipid hybrid membranes capable of self-assembling into containers ranging from virus scale (119 nm) to bacterial scale (1.2 μm).

These isotropic “sticky discs” bypass rigid Caspar–Klug viral geometry, introducing structural compliance through flexible oligo-dT domains. The result? A programmable DNA fabric that is as soft as a biological membrane yet as addressable as a microchip.

Even more astonishing: scaling from small to XXL requires only minor design tweaks—costing roughly $160 in new strands. With built-in porosity, Dipid membranes act as nanofactories, demonstrated by in-vitro transcription experiments where T7 polymerase freely entered to activate fluorescent RNA inside the container.

We are witnessing the birth of cell-scale soft robotics—where molecular computation, motors, and membrane topography converge.

📖 Source paper: Self-assembled cell-scale containers made from DNA origami membranes. Nature Materials (2025).

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