Designer nanoscale DNA assemblies programmed from the top down

• DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4388
• Publication Date: 2016-05-27T04:14:15Z
• Authors: Rémi Veneziano; Sakul Ratanalert; Kaiming Zhang; Fei Zhang; Hao Yan; Wah Chiu; Mark Bathe
• Keywords: Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Cryoelectron Microscopy; DNA, Single-Stranded; Nucleic Acid Conformation; Base Pairing; Algorithms; Nanostructures

Simplifying DNA origami design

Many intricate nanostructures have been made with DNA origami. This process occurs when a long DNA scaffold develops a particular shape after hybridization with short staple strands. Most designs, however, require a difficult iterative procedure of refining the base pairing. Veneziano et al. now report algorithms that automate the design of arbitrary DNA wireframe structures. Synthesizing and structurally characterizing a variety of nanostructures allowed for verification of the algorithms' accuracy.

Science , this issue p. 1534