Scaling Up DNA Self-Assembly

Yahong Chen; Wei Sun; Chaoyong Yang; Zhi Zhu

doi:10.1021/acsabm.0c00035

Scaling Up DNA Self-Assembly

ACS Appl Bio Mater. 2020 May 18;3(5):2805-2815. doi: 10.1021/acsabm.0c00035. Epub 2020 Mar 10.

Authors

Yahong Chen^{1

2}, Wei Sun², Chaoyong Yang^{1

3}, Zhi Zhu¹

Affiliations

¹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, The MOE Key Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis and Instrumentation, State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China.
² Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, Department of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
³ Institute of Molecular Medicine, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200127, China.

PMID: 35025410
DOI: 10.1021/acsabm.0c00035

Abstract

Recent advances in structural DNA nanotechnology, including DNA origami and DNA bricks, have enabled arbitrarily complexed nanopatterns. However, most of these DNA structures are limited with sub-100 nm dimensions because of the limits from the length of scaffold strand, as well as the sequence library. This review will focus on different strategies for scaling-up DNA self-assembly, including the hierarchical assembly of the preformed DNA building blocks both in solution and on surface, the scaffolded assembly of finite sized DNA structures, the nonhierarchical assembly of single-stranded DNA bricks, and the seed-mediated algorithmic assembly. The design criteria, the building blocks, and the key assembly conditions for each assembly strategy are described. In addition, the future challenges, as well as application potentials of large-area DNA structures, are discussed.

Keywords: DNA nanotechnology; finite size; hierarchical assembly; infinite size; nonhierarchical assembly; scale-up.