![]() ![]() "We are actively looking at the first nanomedicine applications with our ssOrigami technology." "I think we are much closer to real practical applications of the technology," said Yan. It's one thing to make crafty patterns and smiley faces with DNA, but critics of DNA origami have been wondering when the practical applications would come about. The algorithm and software were validated by the automated design and experimental construction of six distinct DNA ssOrigami structures (four rhombuses and two heart shapes). "With help from a computer scientist in the team, we could also codify the design process as a mathematically rigorous formal algorithm and automate the design by developing a user-friendly software tool," said Yan. "This gave us a design strategy to allow us to fold one long strand into complex architecture." "The key innovation of our study is to use DNA and RNA to construct a structurally complex yet knot-free structure that can be folded smoothly from a single strand," Yan said. They were able to crack the code of how RNA makes structures to develop a fully programmable single-stranded origami architecture. Could this trick work again for single-stranded DNA or RNA origami? The complex RNA structures discovered to date contain single-stranded RNA molecules that self-fold into structures without any topological knots. They found what they were looking for with a chemical cousin of DNA, in the form of complex, RNA structures. Credit: Biodesign Institute, Arizona State Universityįor Yan and his team to make their breakthrough, they had to go back to the drawing board, which meant looking at nature again for inspiration. One way around this is to engineer one long strand that could fold itself into any design or architecture."įurthermore, each method has been limited because as the size of the structure increases, the ability to fold correctly becomes more challenging.Ī DNA origami with an emoji-like smiley face. "When you have so many short pieces of DNA, you can't replicate it using biological systems. "These two methods are not very scalable in terms of synthesis," said Fei Zhang, a senior co-author on the paper. The second method was scaffolded DNA, where a single strand is shaped into a structure by using helper strands of DNA, that staple the structure into place. The first was molecular bricks, small, short pieces of DNA that can fold together to make a single structure. ![]() To date, DNA nanotechnology scientists have had to rely on two main methods for making spatially addressable structures with finite dimensions. "We are always inspired by nature's designs to make information-carrying molecules that can self-fold into the nanoscale shapes we want to make,"Īs proof of concept, they've pushed the envelope to make Emoji-like smiley faces, hearts, triangle shapes-18 shapes in total- that significantly expand the design studio space and material scalability for so-called, "bottom-up" nanotechnology. "I think this is an exciting breakthrough, and a great opportunity for synthetic biology as well," said Hao Yan, a co-inventor of the technology, director of the ASU Biodesign Institute's Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics, and the Milton Glick Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences. ![]() Dubbed "single-stranded origami," their new strategy uses one long, thin noodle-like strand of DNA, or its chemical cousin RNA, that can self-fold -without even a single knot -into the largest, most complex structures to date.Īnd, the strands forming these structures can be made inside living cells or using enzymes in a test tube, allowing scientists the potential to plug-and-play with new designs and functions for nanomedicine-like tiny, nanobots playing doctor and delivering drugs within cells to the site of injury. Now, a team of Arizona State and Harvard scientists has invented a major new advance in DNA nanotechnology. Similarly, DNA origami scientists are dreaming up a variety of shapes -at a scale one thousand times smaller than a human hair-that they hope will one day revolutionize computing, electronics and medicine. Scientist borrowed its moniker from the paper artists who conjure up birds, flowers and planes from imaginatively folding a single sheet of paper. This burgeoning field is called DNA origami. ![]()
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