Designer Structures Assembled from Modular DNA Superbricks

ACS Appl Bio Mater. 2020 May 18;3(5):2850-2853. doi: 10.1021/acsabm.9b01046. Epub 2019 Dec 4.

Abstract

Self-assembled DNA structures hold great application potentials in many fields. The DNA structure of a specific feature, however, generally requires a distinct set of DNA strands with unique sequences, which is costly and error-prone. Herein, we expanded the modularity of DNA bricks to assemble a number of DNA structures including objects and lattices from the same set of DNA strands. We designed DNA superbricks composed of ∼200 conventional DNA bricks of 52 nucleotides. By modularly programming the sticky interactions between DNA superbricks, we have successfully assembled seven DNA structures of designer features including DNA objects and one-dimensional and two-dimensional DNA brick lattices.

Keywords: DNA bricks; DNA lattices; DNA self-assembly; cost-effective; modularity.