Editor's Summary
16 March 2006
DNA origami
DNA is a popular building block for nanostructures as it combines self-assembly with programmability and a plethora of chemical techniques for its manipulation. There is an extensive literature on DNA nanomaterials, but a procedure described this week breaks many of the fabrication rules established in the field. Paradoxically, although it ignores sequence design, strand purity and strand concentration ratios, the new method yields DNA nanostructures that are larger and more complex than previously possible. The one-pot method uses a few hundred short DNA strands to 'staple' a very long strand into two-dimensional structures that adopt any desired shape, like the 'nanoface' on the cover. Individual staples can be made into nanometre-scale pixels that create surface patterns on a given 100-nm shape (like the Americas map and snowflakes), or to combine shapes into larger structures (the hexagon of triangles).
News and Views: Nanostructures: The manifold faces of DNA
When it comes to making shapes out of DNA, the material is there, and its properties are understood. What was missing was a convincing, universal design scheme to allow our capabilities to unfold to the full.
Lloyd M. Smith
doi:10.1038/440283a
Article: Folding DNA to create nanoscale shapes and patterns
Paul W. K. Rothemund
doi:10.1038/nature04586
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (575K) | Supplementary information
