Shape Replication Through Self-Assembly and RNase Enzymes
Published on: 2010/01/05
Abstract
We introduce the problem of shape replication in the Wang tile self-assembly model. Given an input shape, we consider the problem of designing a self-assembly system which will replicate that shape into either a specific number of copies, or an unbounded number of copies. Motivated by practical DNA implementations of Wang tiles, we consider a model in which tiles consisting of DNA or RNA can be dynamically added in a sequence of stages. We further permit the addition of RNase enzymes capable of disintegrating RNA tiles. Under this model, we show that arbitrary genus-0 shapes can be replicated infinitely many times using only \(O(1)\) distinct tile types and \(O(1)\) stages. Further, we show how to replicate precisely \(n\) copies of a shape using \(O(\log n)\) stages and \(O(1)\) tile types.
Authors
Zachary Abel, Nadia Benbernou, Mirela Damian, Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, Robin Flatland, Scott Kominers, Robert Schweller
