Artificial DNA Lattice Fabrication by Noncomplementarity and Geometrical Incompatibility

Abstract

Fabrication of DNA nanostructures primarily follows two fundamental rules. First, DNA oligonucleotides mutually combine by Watson-Crick base-pairing rules between complementary base sequences. Second, the geometrical compatibility of the DNA oligonucleotide must match for lattices to form. Here we present a fabrication scheme of DNA nanostructures with noncomplementary and/or geometrically incompatible DNA oligonucleotides, which contradicts conventional DNA structure creation rules. Quantitative analyses of DNA lattice sizes were carried out to verify the unfavorable binding occurrences, which correspond to errors in algorithmic self-assembly. Further studies of these types of bindings may shed more light on the exact mechanisms at work in the self-assembly of DNA nanostructures.