Team: The Ohio State University — OhioMOD
Title: A Framework for Assembling and Reconfiguring DNA Origami Containers
Abstract: Previous DNA origami research has illustrated a wide array of 3D structures. Typically, folding multiple objects requires ordering a new set of DNA components for each desired structure. This project seeks to overcome this limitation by developing a hierarchical assembly framework where multiple 3D shapes can be constructed from a single base DNA origami structure. The basic shape is constructed by folding four equilateral triangles from a single DNA origami scaffold and then arranging them into a parallelogram. Schematics were created to fold these parallelograms into four nanoscale container-like shapes: a tetrahedron, an octahedron, an icosahedron, and a wheel. These final shapes are composed of triangles joined by double stranded DNA connections that can be disrupted utilizing DNA strand displacement to ultimately reconfigure a given shape into a different 3D shape (i.e. reconfigure an octahedron to an icosahedron). This project will enable an economic framework to fabrication of multiple DNA origami structures. Furthermore, this approach could be used to develop DNA structures that can reconfigure in response to a biological stimulus, for example cancer cell microenvironments, for drug delivery applications.
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