Nucleic acid nanotechnology

Abstract:

Imagine a host of nanoscale DNA robots move,autonomously over a microscale DNA nanostructure, each following a programmable route and serving as a nanoparticle and/or an information carrier. The-accomplishment of this goal has many applications in nanorobotics, nano-fabrication, nano-electronics, nano-diagnostics/therapeutics, and nano-computing. Recent success in constructing large scale DNA nanostructures in a programmable way provides the structural basis to meet the above challenge. The missing link is a DNA walker that can autonomously move along a route programmably embedded in the underlying nanostructure - existing synthetic DNA mechanical devices only exhibit localized non-extensible motions such as bi-directional rotation, open/close, and contraction/extension, mediated by external environmental changes. We describe in this paper two designs of autonomous DNA walking devices in which a walker moves along a linear track unidirectionally. The track of each device consists of a periodic linear array of anchorage sites. A walker sequentially steps over the anchorages in an autonomous unidirectional way. Each walking device makes use of alternating actions of restriction enzymes and ligase to achieve unidirectional translational motion.

Abstract:

Holographic lithography is well-adapted to the production of three-dimensional photonic crystals for applications in the technologically important optical regime. We illustrate the flexibility of this approach by considering the design and fabrication of photonic crystals with symmetries that favour the formation of a complete photonic band gap. One of them, a structure with diamond symmetry, is calculated to have a complete gap at a refractive index contrast equal to the lowest yet reported.

Abstract:

A system of DNA "tiles" that is designed to assemble to form two-dimensional arrays is observed to form narrow ribbons several micrometers in length. The uniform width of the ribbons and lack of frayed edges lead us to propose that they are arrays that have curled and closed on themselves to form tubes. This proposal is confirmed by the observation of tubes with helical order.