Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) offers enormous potential for chemical sensing, even though the large nonlinearity of the effect makes reproducible sensing difficult. SERS relies upon a fundamental phenomenon in physics called the Raman effect - the change in the frequency of monochromatic light, such as a laser, when it passes through a substance. Properly harnessed, Raman scattering can identify specific molecules by detecting their characteristic spectral fingerprints. A novel DNA-based assembly technique developed by scientists in South Korea now offers a means of precise engineering of gap distances in nanoparticle dumbbells for a robust surface-enhanced Raman sensing of DNA and RNA molecules.