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Open access, freely available online Research Digest Synopses of Research Articles Using Biology to Create Complex Patterns DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020448 In his seminal exploration of the new study, Rothemund and colleagues “sticky ends” whose sequence was properties of living organisms, What use DNA to show that crystal growth complementary to the sticky ends of Is Life?, Erwin Schroedinger concluded can be programmed to create specifi c tiles it should stick to. Each tile was either that life depends in large part on aperiodic patterns. Inspired by a model white (0) or black (1): a black tile can fi t at storing and processing information. For of crystal growth as a computational any site where the two neighboring tiles genetic material to carry the diverse process, they have programmed DNA are opposite colors, while a white tile can instructions required for living processes, molecules to act as molecular building fi t at any site where the two neighboring he proposed, it must be stored in an blocks, arranging themselves according tiles are the same color. Logically, the new aperiodic crystal. Just nine years later, it to local rules that in turn create a tile’s color is the exclusive-or (XOR) of the was clear that DNA is indeed an aperiodic complex global pattern. The resulting tiles in the previous layer. crystal and that genetic information two-dimensional structures, which self- That such logical layer-by-layer is conveyed through this irregular assemble from knotted DNA complexes iteration of XOR compu