Three-Point-Star Deoxyribonucleic Acid Tiles with the Core Arm Length at Three Half-Turns for Two-Dimensional Archimedean Tilings and Beyond.

Abstract

2D Archimedean tiling and complex tessellation patterns assembled from soft materials including modular DNA tiles have attracted great interest because of their specific structures and potential applications in nanofabrication, nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, biomedical sensing, drug delivery, therapeutics, etc. Traditional three- and four-point-star DNA tiles with the core arm length at two half-turns (specified as three- and four-point-star-E previously and abbreviated as 3PSE and 4PSE tiles here) have been applied to assemble intricate tessellations through tuning the size of inserted nT (n = 1-7, T is thymine) loops on helper strands at the tile center. Following our recent findings using a new type of four-point-star tiles with the core arm length at three half-turns (specified as four-point-star-O previously and abbreviated as 4PSO tiles here) to assemble DNA tubes and flat 2D arrays, we report here the cross-hybridization weaving architectures at the tile center to construct three new 3PSO tiles with circular DNA oligonucleotides of 96-nt (nucleotides) serving as the scaffolds, further the monotonous and combinatory E- and O-tilings on one type of 3PSO tiles to create 2D Archimedean tiling patterns (6.6.6) and (4.8.8), and finally, the combination of 3PSO with 4PSO as well as 2PSO tiles to tile into complex tessellation patterns. The easy realization of regular and intricate DNA tessellations with 2-4PSO tiles not only richens the fundamental DNA modules and complex DNA nanostructures in types but also broadens the potential application scopes of DNA nanostructures in nanofabrication, DNA computing, biomedicine, etc.