title: Synthesis from DNA of a molecule with the connectivity of a cube.
abstract: A principal goal of biotechnology is the assembly of novel biomaterials for analytical, industrial and therapeutic purposes. The advent of stable immobile nucleic acid branched junctions makes DNA a good candidate for building frameworks to which proteins or other functional molecules can be attached and thereby juxtaposed. The addition of single-stranded 'sticky' ends to branched DNA molecules converts them into macromolecular valence clusters that can be ligated together. The edges of these frameworks are double-helical DNA, and the vertices correspond to the branch points of junctions. Here, we report the construction from DNA of a covalently closed cube-like molecular complex containing twelve equal-length double-helical edges arranged about eight vertices. Each of the six 'faces' of the object is a single-stranded cyclic molecule, doubly catenated to four neighbouring strands, and each vertex is connected by an edge to three others. Each edge contains a unique restriction site for analytical purposes. This is the first construction of a closed polyhedral object from DNA.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York 10003.
authors.forename: J H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: N C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Seeman
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004247:DNA / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D015183:Restriction Mapping; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D004247:DNA