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Excellent Science INNOVATION
Swing arms for dynamic reconfiguration of nanoparticles on DNA
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Market Maturity: Exploring
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Market Creation Potential
This innovation was assessed by the JRC’s Market Creation Potential indicator framework as addressing the needs of existing markets and existing customers. Learn more
Women-led innovation
A woman had a leadership role in developing this innovation in at least one of the Key Innovator organisations listed below.
Go to Market needs
Needs that, if addressed, can increase the chances this innovation gets to (or closer to) the market incude:
  • Secure capital
Location of Key Innovators developing this innovation
Key Innovators
UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDG)
This innovation contributes to the following SDG(s)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 9
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

The UN explains: "Investments in infrastructure – transport, irrigation, energy and information and communication technology – are crucial to achieving sustainable development and empowering communities in many countries. It has long been recognized that growth in productivity and incomes, and improvements in health and education outcomes require investment in infrastructure."

The EU-funded Research Project
This innovation was developed under the Horizon 2020 project DNA-FAIRYLIGHTS with an end date of 28/02/2025
  • Read more about this project on CORDIS
Description of Project DNA-FAIRYLIGHTS
Modern society has an ever-increasing need for long-term, high density data encoding and storage. DNA technology allows to store data at unprecedented density, and functionalized DNA integrates digital bits placed along a single strand to encode information, which is available at low cost with natural (not-synthetic) DNA. DNA-FAIRYLIGHTS will raise this concept of functionalized natural DNA for data encoding and storage to a completely new level by decorating DNA carriers with a precise sequence of metallic nanomaterials with well-defined optical responses. These hybrid DNA structures will allow for direct optical readout, and the different resonance wavelengths will allow to go far beyond (0,1) encoding. In DNA-FAIRYLIGHTS we will design ultrasmall plasmonic and light-emitting particles with at least 9 different distinct optical responses that will enable multiplexed data encoding. We will develop concepts for linking/unlinking and orientational reconfiguration by external stimuli that will allow for reconfigurable memories and computation. The DNA-FAIRYLIGHTS project will provide: (i) a revolutionary technology that utilizes the DNA to arrange metallic nanomaterials in sequences with with nm precision; (ii) a novel approach to fabricate functionalized DNA that allows for integration of metal nanomaterials for data storage and manipulation; (iii) a next-generation model to encode and store information along the DNA; (iv) an optoelectronic/microfluidic system to modulate the arrangement of the metallic nanostructures along the DNA in order to dynamically control the information content; (v) readout devices with single particle sensitivity with fast response and decoding of the stored information in one functional unit. Each result of DNA-FAIRYLIGHTS will provide mile stones for novel technologies in next generation biomolecular synthesis, hybrid solid-state / biological systems, bioimaging, nanoplasmonics, DNA data storage, steganography and bio-optoelectronics.

Innnovation Radar's analysis of this innovation is based on data collected on 16/05/2025.
The unique id of this innovation in the European Commission's IT systems is: 110020