Stress in DNA Gridiron Facilitates the Formation of Two-Dimensional Crystalline Structures
Article
Yu, L, Cheng, J, Wang, D et al. (2022). Stress in DNA Gridiron Facilitates the Formation of Two-Dimensional Crystalline Structures
. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 144(22), 9747-9752. 10.1021/jacs.2c02009
Yu, L, Cheng, J, Wang, D et al. (2022). Stress in DNA Gridiron Facilitates the Formation of Two-Dimensional Crystalline Structures
. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 144(22), 9747-9752. 10.1021/jacs.2c02009
Programmable DNA nanotechnology has generated some of the most intricate self-assembled nanostructures and has been employed in a growing number of applications, including functional nanomaterials, nanofabrication, biophysics, photonics, molecular machines, and drug delivery. An important design rule for DNA nanostructures is to minimize the mechanical stress to reduce the potential energy in these nanostructures whenever it is possible. This work revisits the DNA gridiron design consisting of Holliday junctions and compares the self-assembly of the canonical DNA gridiron with a new design of DNA gridiron, which has a higher degree of mechanical stress because of the interweaving of DNA helices. While the interweaving DNA gridiron indeed exhibits lower yield, compared to its canonical counterpart of a similar size, we discover that the mechanical stress within the interweaving gridiron can promote the formation of the two-dimensional crystalline lattice instead of nanotubes. Furthermore, tuning the design of interweaving gridiron leads to the change of overall crystal size and regularity of geometry. Interweaving DNA double helices represents a new design strategy in the self-assembly of DNA nanostructures. Furthermore, the discovery of the new role of mechanical stress in the self-assembly of DNA nanostructures provides useful knowledge to DNA nanotechnology practitioners: a more balanced view regarding mechanical stress can be considered when designing future DNA nanostructures.
