Designed 3D DNA Crystals.
The simplest practical route to producing precisely designed 3D macroscopic objects is to form a crystalline arrangement by self-assembly, because such a periodic array has only conceptually simple requirements: a motif that has a robust 3D structure, dominant affinity interactions between parts of the motif when it self-associates, and predictable structures for these affinity interactions. Fulfilling these three criteria to produce a 3D periodic system is not easy, but should readily be achieved with well-structured branched DNA motifs tailed by sticky ends (Zheng et al., Nature 461:74-77, 2009). Herein, a brief introduction to designed 3D DNA crystals from tensegrity triangle is presented.
Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA. ned.seeman@nyu.edu.
Nadrian C
NC
Seeman
Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA.
Ruojie
R
Sha
Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA.
Jens
J
Birktoft
Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA.
Jianping
J
Zheng
Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA.
Wenyan
W
Liu
Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA.
Tong
T
Wang
Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA.
Chengde
C
Mao
D003460:Crystallization / Q000379:methods; D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray / Q000379:methods; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics*; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D059372:Nucleotide Motifs / Q000235:genetics*
D004247:DNA
DNA crystal; Self-assembly