Discussion

Reason the net took a curved surface like a sphere

It takes quite a force to crumple a piece of paper. Same thing can be said when breaking a thick plane. This is all because of the restoring force. So pieces try to stick together avoiding twists and bends as much as possible. In this way we can speculate sphere is the equilibrium point when the net sphere has the smallest curvature possible.

In order to validate our hypothesis, we calculated the surface area of circular tile sheet and spherical shell from florescence microscope image. The surface area practically coincided, thus meaning there is a large possibility that this spherical shell was made from a single circular tile sheet.

In addition, according to the image, the center of the spherical shell had a dent. We can assume that that is where the edges connected.

Advantages

Our tiles have mainly 3 decisive advantages over 3D DNA Origami.
Firstly, the cost for the tiles is way cheaper than 3D DNA Origami (This can also denote that the required DNA quantity and variety are little).

Secondly, our tiles can enwrap all sorts of shapes. In our experiment we captured spherical beads. However, our tiles can bend to some extent and keep its’ rigidity. So we infer we can even capture an excessively lopsided object like an eggplant for example.

Lastly, small molecules can pass through the space between the three-point star and the joint. One concrete application example of this feature is by combining it with the system of bacterial quorum sensing. This system starts working when bacteria itself perceives the change in the extracellular concentration of chemicals that the bacteria itself synthesizes or extracellular secretes. When bacteria realize the change, they indirectly recognize the gathered density. If the density is too high, gene expression rate and population rate will be suppressed. If we could add a certain mechanism for the closed curves to connect together, they would come close, thus raising the secreted chemicals locally. Meaning we can control the multiplication rate freely, and may even drive bacteria to death.