DNA origami

DNA origami is the nanoscale folding of DNA to create arbitrary two and three dimensional shapes at the nanoscale. The specificity of the interactions between complementary base pairs make DNA a useful construction material through design of its base sequences. Developed by Paul Rothemund at the California Institute of Technology, the process involves the folding of a long single strand of viral DNA aided by multiple smaller "staple" strands. These shorter strands bind the longer in various places, resulting in various shapes including a smiley face and a coarse map of China and the Americas, along with many three dimensional structures such as cubes.

To produce a desired shape, images are drawn with a raster fill of a single long DNA molecule. This design is then fed into a computer program which calculates the placement of individual staple strands. Each staple binds to a specific region of the DNA template, and thus due to Watson-Crick base pairing the necessary sequences of all staple strands are known and displayed. The DNA is mixed and then heated and cooled. As the DNA cools the various staples pull the long strand into the desired shape. Designs are directly observable via several methods including atomic force microscopy, or fluorescence microscopy when DNA is coupled to fluorescent materials .

Bottom-up self assembly methods are considered promising alternatives that offer cheap, parallel synthesis of nanostructures under relatively mild conditions. Many potential applications have been suggested in the literature, including enzyme immobilization, drug carry capsules, and nanotechnological self-assembly of materials. Though DNA is not the natural choice for building active structures for nanorobotic applications due to its lack of structural and catalytic versatility, several papers have examined the possibility of molecular walkers on origami and switches for algorithmic computing. DNA origami was the cover story of Nature on March 16, 2006.

See also

• DNA nanotechnology
• Molecular self-assembly
• Folding@home

References

• Rothemund, Paul W. K. (2006). "Folding DNA to create nanoscale shapes and patterns". Nature 440 (7082): 297–302. doi:10.1038/nature04586. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 16541064. 
• Lin, Chenxiang; Liu, Yan; Rinker, Sherri; Yan, Hao (2006). "DNA Tile Based Self-Assembly: Building Complex Nanoarchitectures". ChemPhysChem 7 (8): 1641–7. doi:10.1002/cphc.200600260. PMID 16832805. 
• DNA 'organises itself' on silicon – BBC News 2009-08-17

This nanotechnology-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v · Categories: DNA nanotechnology Biochemistry stubs Nanotechnology stubs Wikimedia Foundation. 2010. Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР? Stephanus Schoeman Falkland Islands at the 2006 Commonwealth Games Look at other dictionaries: DNA nanotechnology — seeks to make artificial, designed nanostructures out of nucleic acids, such as this DNA tetrahedron.[1] Each edge of the tetrahedron is a 20 base pair DNA double helix, and each vertex is a three arm junction. DNA n …   Wikipedia Origami (disambiguation) — Origami is the traditional Japanese folk art of paper folding. Origami may also refer to: Bulbophyllum origami, a species of orchid DNA origami, the folding of DNA to create two and three dimensional shapes at the nanoscale Origami (magic trick) …   Wikipedia DNA — For a non technical introduction to the topic, see Introduction to genetics. For other uses, see DNA (disambiguation). The structure of the DNA double helix. The atoms in the structure are colour coded by element and the detailed structure of two …   Wikipedia Nucleic acid design — can be used to create nucleic acid complexes with complicated secondary structures such as this four arm junction. These four strands associate into this structure because it maximizes the number of correct base pairs, with A s matched to T s and …   Wikipedia Paul W. K. Rothemund — Paul W.K. Rothemund is a senior research fellow at the Computation and Neural Systems department at Caltech. [cite web | url = http://www.dna.caltech.edu/ pwkr/ | title = Paul W.K. Rothemund official website | accessdate = 2007 12 28] He has… …   Wikipedia Natural computing — For the scientific journal, see Natural Computing (journal). Natural computing, also called Natural computation, is a terminology introduced to encompass three classes of methods: 1) those that take inspiration from nature for the development of… …   Wikipedia History of computing hardware — Computing hardware is a platform for information processing (block diagram) The history of computing hardware is the record of the ongoing effort to make computer hardware faster, cheaper, and capable of storing more data. Computing hardware… …   Wikipedia Nucleic acid tertiary structure — Example of a large catalytic RNA. The self splicing group II intron from Oceanobacillus iheyensis.[1] The tertiary structure of a nucleic acid is its precise three dimensional structure, as defined by the atomic coordinates.[2] …   Wikipedia Molecular self-assembly — An example of a molecular self assembly through hydrogen bonds.[1] Molecular self assembly is the process by which molecules adopt a defined arrangement without guidance or management from an outside source. Th …   Wikipedia Targeted drug delivery — Targeted drug delivery, sometimes called smart drug delivery,[1] is a method of delivering medication to a patient in a manner that increases the concentration of the medication in some parts of the body relative to others. The goal of a targeted …   Wikipedia 18+ © Academic, 2000-2024 Contact us: Technical Support, Advertising Dictionaries export, created on PHP, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MODx. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet Share the article and excerpts Direct link … Do a right-click on the link above and select “Copy Link”