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DNA nanotechnology

Shaken, not heated: DNA self-assembly at room temperature

Nature Nanotechnology volume 18, pages 1257–1258 (2023)Cite this article

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DNA-origami nanostructures self-assembled at milder physicochemical parameters in magnesium-free conditions achieve structural complexities akin to those formed by thermal annealing at elevated temperatures, and open a route to assembling DNA nanomachines in physiological conditions.

Thermal annealing plays a key role in a wide range of applications in metallurgy, computation, and nanotechnology. In general, annealing routes a system through a complex energy landscape toward a minimum that may be difficult or impossible to reach spontaneously. For example, heating a ferrous metal above a critical temperature and cooling it very slowly results in a more workable and ductile material with a uniform microstructure with minimal internal stress. Simulated annealing is an algorithm that gradually lowers a ‘temperature’ parameter to find the global minimum of a function. Similarly, in DNA nanotechnology1, thermal annealing has been essential to the formation of complex nanometer-scale objects. With an unexpected twist in the composition of sample preparation conditions, writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Rossi-Gendron et al. show that thermal annealing may be a thing of the past for DNA nanostructures, which can now be made by just mixing the necessary components, shaking, and waiting2.

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Fig. 1: DNA-origami fabrication in TANa buffer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Elisa Franco

  2. Department of Bioengineering, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Elisa Franco

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  1. Elisa Franco
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Correspondence to Elisa Franco.

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Franco, E. Shaken, not heated: DNA self-assembly at room temperature. Nat. Nanotechnol. 18, 1257–1258 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-023-01467-3

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