Vallée-Bélisle et al. used a DNA to create a thermometer for nano-scale temperature measurement. These nanometer thermometers greatly help people understand how temperatures exist in the microscopic world.

Researchers at the University of Montreal used DNA to invent a thermometer. This artificially encoded DNA is only 1/20000 in size. This kind of thermometer can measure the temperature of the micro environment, which will greatly deepen people's understanding of nature and nanotechnology.

Sixty years ago, scientists discovered that DNA is a key biomolecule that stores human genetic information. DNA double strands are released when heated (this process is called melting). Prof. Alexis Vallée-Bélisle said: “In recent years, biochemists have discovered that biological molecules such as proteins and RNA will change in the body with changes in temperature. Our team was inspired to create a variety of encoded DNA. Thermometers, these DNAs can be melted at a specific temperature so that temperature measurements are achieved."

The main advantage of using DNA as a thermometer is that the structure is simple and can be coded manually. David Gareau, the first author of this paper, explained that "The DNA contains 4 deoxynucleotides: ATGC, where A and T are paired and G and C are paired. The bases are connected by hydrogen bonds. There are two hydrogen bonds between AT, and there are three hydrogen bonds between the GCs. So when the GC pair has a larger proportion in the DNA, the melting requires more energy. Using this structural feature, we can produce Melting of DNA under specific temperature conditions.” Another author, Arnaud Desrosiers, added: “In order to see these microscopic changes, we added fluorescent labels to these DNA structures so that we created a length of only 5 Nanometer thermometer."

Because of the invention of a DNA thermometer, nanotechnology opened a new door to us, and it helped us understand molecular biology in more depth. "There are still a lot of problems in biology that need to be solved. For example, we know that the body's normal body temperature is 37.5°C, but we don't know if the temperature inside the cell is higher." The team is studying the problem of high cell speeds. Whether it will overheat when producing molecules. "I believe in the near future, we can apply this research result to electronic devices to achieve nano-level temperature monitoring."