Three-Dimensional Structures Self-Assembled from DNA Bricks

By Yonggang Ke, Luvena L. Ong, William M. Shih, Peng Yin. Science, 2012

966 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Building with DNA One route for assembling three-dimensional (3D) DNA nanostructures is to start with a long natural DNA single strand and attach short strands, or “staples,” that cause the entire “origami” structure to fold into a desired shape. Ke et al. (p. 1177, see the cover; see the Perspective by Gothelf) present an alternative approach to 3D assembly that builds upon modular assembly of 2D DNA tiles. One hundred and two distinct shapes were created from four-domain, 32-nucleotide single-stranded DNAs that assembled like children's blocks; each block could bind to four neighboring blocks through specific pairing interactions. Computer design and stepwise assembly allowed assembly of hollow shapes with a variety of internal cavities. Stepwise assembly of 32-nucleotide DNA “bricks” can create a wide variety of nanoscale objects. We describe a simple and robust method to construct complex three-dimensional (3D) structures by using short synthetic DNA strands that we call “DNA bricks.” In one-step annealing reactions, bricks with hundreds of distinct sequences self-assemble into prescribed 3D shapes. Each 32-nucleotide brick is a modular component; it binds to four local neighbors and can be removed or added independently. Each 8–base pair interaction between bricks defines a voxel with dimensions of 2.5 by 2.5 by 2.7 nanometers, and a master brick collection defines a “molecular canvas” with dimensions of 10 by 10 by 10 voxels. By selecting subsets of bricks from this canvas, we constructed a panel of 102 distinct shapes exhibiting sophisticated surface features, as well as intricate interior cavities and tunnels.

Subfields: Ecology, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/31385806ca9c484c377b2a0fd9f48ea5b9efa6cf

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Citations in the corpus

Programmable materials and the nature of the DNA bond (2015, background): “Consequently, strands can be designed to form a 2D (45) or 3D (46) brickwork pattern.”
Large-scale de novo DNA synthesis: technologies and applications (2014, methodology): “The emergence of DNA origami 123 and single-stranded tiles to form complex 2D and 3D shapes [124] [125] [126] has been used by researchers to tackle problems from materials 127 to therapeutics 128 .”