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Self-Replication of DNA Nanotile Patterns

Self-replication is ubiquitous in the living world but artificial self-replication has been elusive. We have developed a process for self-replication of an arbitrary seed made from nanometer scale DNA tiles. The tiles are constructs of 10 DNA strands which form a bent triple helix, BTX, with four lateral single strands -- ‘sticky ends’ -- for recognition and hybridization with complementary tiles, and six longitudinal sticky ends for joining tiles to form a sequence.