Structural DNA nanotechnology: Information guided self-assembly

The central task of nanotechnology is to control motions and organize matter with nanometer precision. To achieve this, scientists have investigated a large variety of materials including inorganic materials, organic molecules, and biological polymers as well as different methods that can be sorted into so-called “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches. Among all of the remarkable achievements made, the success of DNA self-assembly in building programmable nanopatterns has attracted broad attention. The fabrication of DNA nanostructures begins with the designed assembly of single stranded DNA into small building-block materials called tiles. DNA tiles can then be further self-assembled into larger arrays with distinct topological and geometric features using non-overlapping sticky-end cohesion. DNA nanostructures assembled in this fashion can be modified in a number of ways to contain functional materials with useful biological and electronic properties. This “bottom-up” type of approach has enormous value in the development of “molecular printboards” with resolution far exceeding current nanolithographic methods. This chapter reviews some of the recent progress in structural DNA nanotechnology, a fast evolving research field of using DNA as an information-coding polymer for nanotechnology applications.