Research progress and applications of self-assembled DNA nanostructures

Abstract

DNA nanotechnology is an example of bottom-up molecular self-assembly, in which molecular components spontaneously organize into stable structures; the particular form of these structures is induced by the physical and chemical properties of the components selected by the designers. In this field, nucleic acids are used as non-biological engineering materials for nanotechnology rather than as the carriers of genetic information in living cells. This use is enabled by the strict base pairing rules of nucleic acids, which cause only portions of strands with complementary base sequences to bind together to form strong, rigid double helix structures. This allows for the rational design of base sequences that will selectively assemble to form complex target structures with precisely controlled nanoscale features. This article mainly reviews the developments of DNA self-assembly achieved recently and also introduces the design methods of it, which would be helpful and enlightened for our future research.