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DOE OSTI · 1490645

Programming molecular topologies from single-stranded nucleic acids

Qi, Xiaodong·Zhang, Fei·Su, Zhaoming·Jiang, Shuoxing·Han, Dongran·Ding, Baoquan·Liu, Yan·Chiu, Wah·Yin, Peng·Yan, Hao
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Abstract

Molecular knots represent one of the most extraordinary topological structures in biological polymers. Creating highly knotted nanostructures with well-defined and sophisticated geometries and topologies remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate a general strategy to design and construct highly knotted nucleic acid nanostructures, each weaved from a single-stranded DNA or RNA chain by hierarchical folding in a prescribed order. Sets of DNA and RNA knots of two- or three-dimensional shapes have been designed and constructed (ranging from 1700 to 7500 nucleotides), and they exhibit complex topological features, with high crossing numbers (from 9 up to 57). These single-stranded DNA/RNA knots can be replicated and amplified enzymatically in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, this work establishes a general platform for constructing nucleic acid nanostructures with complex molecular topologies.

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60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES

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Qi, Xiaodong, Zhang, Fei, Su, Zhaoming, Jiang, Shuoxing, Han, Dongran, Ding, Baoquan, Liu, Yan, Chiu, Wah, Yin, Peng, Yan, Hao. 2018-11-02. Programming molecular topologies from single-stranded nucleic acids. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07039-7

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