Size-Independent Transmembrane Transporting of Single Tetrahedral DNA Nanostructures

Xi Chen; Falin Tian; Min Li; Haijiao Xu; Mingjun Cai; Qian Li; Xiaolei Zuo; Hongda Wang; Xinghua Shi; Chunhai Fan; Huricha Baigude; Yuping Shan

doi:10.1002/gch2.201900075

Size-Independent Transmembrane Transporting of Single Tetrahedral DNA Nanostructures

Glob Chall. 2019 Nov 20;4(3):1900075. doi: 10.1002/gch2.201900075. eCollection 2020 Mar.

Authors

Xi Chen^{1

2

3}, Falin Tian⁴, Min Li⁵, Haijiao Xu³, Mingjun Cai³, Qian Li⁵, Xiaolei Zuo⁵, Hongda Wang³, Xinghua Shi⁴, Chunhai Fan⁵, Huricha Baigude², Yuping Shan¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Life Science Advanced Institute of Materials Science Changchun University of Technology Changchun Jilin 130012 China.
² School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Mongolian Medicinal Chemistry Inner Mongolia University Hohhot Inner Mongolia 010020 China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun Jilin 130022 China.
⁴ Laboratory of Theoretical and Computational Nanoscience CAS Key Laboratory for Nanosystem and Hierarchy Fabrication CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience National Center for Nanoscience and Technology Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190 China.
⁵ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Institute of Molecular Medicine Renji Hospital School of Medicine Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai 200240 China.

Abstract

DNA nanostructures have attracted considerable attention as drug delivery carriers. However, the transmembrane kinetics of DNA nanostructures remains less explored. Herein, the dynamic process of transporting single tetrahedral DNA nanostructures (TDNs) is monitored in real time using a force-tracing technique based on atomic force microscopy. The results show that transporting single TDNs into living HeLa cells need ≈53 pN force and ≈25 ms duration with the average speed of ≈0.6 µm s^-1. Interestingly, the dynamic parameters are irrelevant to the size of TDNs, while the larger TDNs rotated slightly during the transporting process. Meanwhile, both the results from single-molecule force tracing and ensemble fluorescence imaging demonstrate that the different size TDNs transmembrane transporting depends on caveolin-mediated endocytosis.

Keywords: force tracing; real‐time tracking; single tetrahedral DNA nanostructures; transmembrane kinetics.