Chapter 3 - DNA nanostructures: chemistry, self-assembly, and applications

Abstract

DNA is the intelligent molecule that stores and transmits genetic information in biological systems. It is a powerful tool for designing various nanostructures and shapes because of inarguably self-assembling nature, precise hybridization, easy to design and fairly predictable DNA geometric structure. It has great potential in fabrication and construction of nanostructures and devices; and also, serves as template upon which other functional materials can be organized. In the last few years, a variety of geometric nanostructured shapes have been developed for various applications including DNA cubes, knots and polyhedral, nanotubes and so on. DNA nanotechnology also develops nanostructures with dynamic functionalities especially for mechanical motion and computation. Dynamic nanostructure designs are developed by the use of toehold-mediated strand displacement, which enables the actuation of most of the dynamic DNA devices. The capability to generate designer DNA architectures with precise spatial control has allowed scientists and engineers to explore novel applications in various fields, including structural biology, DNA computing, nanorobotics, disease diagnosis, and drug delivery. This chapter gives an overview of the supramolecular chemistry, synthesis synthetic DNA to self-assembled structural and dynamic DNA nanostructures, their characterization and promising applications of novel self-assembly nanostructures. It also describes a variety of convenient design rules, and reliable assembly methods have been developed to engineer DNA nanostructures of increasing complexity.