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DNA origami: The bridge from bottom to top

  • DNA Nanotechnology: A Foundation for Programmable Nanoscale Materials
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Abstract

Over the last decade, DNA origami has matured into one of the most powerful bottom-up nanofabrication techniques. It enables both the fabrication of nanoparticles of arbitrary two-dimensional or three-dimensional shapes, and the spatial organization of any DNA-linked nanomaterial, such as carbon nanotubes, quantum dots, or proteins at ∼5-nm resolution. While widely used within the DNA nanotechnology community, DNA origami has yet to be broadly applied in materials science and device physics, which now rely primarily on top-down nanofabrication. In this article, we first introduce DNA origami as a modular breadboard for nanomaterials and then present a brief survey of recent results demonstrating the unique capabilities created by the combination of DNA origami with existing top-down techniques. Emphasis is given to the open challenges associated with each method, and we suggest potential next steps drawing inspiration from recent work in materials science and device physics. Finally, we discuss some near-term applications made possible by the marriage of DNA origami and top-down nanofabrication.

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Acknowledgements

A.G. acknowledges support from the Office of Naval Research Award N000141410702, National Science Foundation Grant Nos. 1636364 and 1317694 (Expedition in Computing, Molecular Programming Project, http://molecular-programming.org. A.T.W. acknowledges support from the NSF CMMI Grant 1562729. M.A.K. acknowledges the Academy of Finland (Project Number 308578). H.L acknowledges support from the Office of Naval Research Award N000141512520.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Pittsburgh, USA

    Anqin Xu

  2. Department of Engineering and Technology, Brigham Young University, USA

    John N. Harb

  3. School of Chemical Engineering, Aalto University, Finland

    Mauri A. Kostiainen

  4. Boise State University, USA

    William L. Hughes

  5. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Brigham Young University, USA

    Adam T. Woolley

  6. Department of Chemistry, University of Pittsburgh, USA

    Haitao Liu

  7. Department of Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology, USA

    Ashwin Gopinath

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  1. Anqin Xu
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  2. John N. Harb
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Correspondence to Anqin Xu.

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Xu, A., Harb, J.N., Kostiainen, M.A. et al. DNA origami: The bridge from bottom to top. MRS Bulletin 42, 943–950 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2017.275

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2017.275

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