Talk:DNA nanotechnology/Archive 1

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At some point you might want to connect with David Bell in the Nanostructures lab at Harvard inre his direct TEM imaging of DNA using high Z (visible) labels. Relevant IMHO to the subject of this article. I'll probably be at the June 15th Wikipedia meeting at the Grafton Pub. if you want to chat about it. Frank Ferguson - fferguson@aol.com Frankatca (talk) 21:15, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

George Church and DNA nanotechnology

Discuss: http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/pers.html http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/DNAlat2.JPG http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/DNA_lattice.JPG —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.96.114.149 (talk) 02:11, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay. I had removed the following sentences from the beginning of the History section: "The concept of building lattices out of DNA strands is attributed to George Church in 1977. <ref>History: See George Church's homepage, [1] [2] [3]</ref> Church shared his ideas with crystallographers, including Nadrian Seeman."

My concern is that the cited references are essentially personal correspondence which is hosted on George Church's personal website, which makes this a primary source. Wikipedia's policies depreciate primary sources in favor of secondary sources published by reliable third parties (see WP:PRIMARY, but also see WP:SELFPUB for a possible counterpoint).

There is certainly room for more details on the discussions leading to Seeman's original work, as long as it is verifiable. If there is a published secondary source about George Church's involvement in the beginnings of DNA nanotechnology, we can absolutely add that. (As a contrast, it is permissible to state here that Seeman "invented" DNA nanotechnology because that is the exact word used in the cited source, a monograph by a third party.) It may also be permissible to say something like "The concept of DNA nanotechnology was invented by Nadrian Seeman in the early 1980s,[1] although similar ideas had been proposed prior to that.[2]" Let me know what you think. Antony–22 (^talk/_contribs) 03:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)