Berlin 2008 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 7: Posters I
BP 7.5: Poster
Monday, February 25, 2008, 17:00–19:30, Poster A
Isothermal DNA Nanotube Self Assembly Using Chemical Dilution — •Thomas Sobey1,2, Stephan Renner1,2, Ralf Jungmann1,2, and Friedrich Simmel1,2 — 1Center for NanoScience and Department of Physics, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 Munich, Germany — 2Physics Department E14, Technical University Munich, James-Franck-Straße, 85748 Garching, Germany
DNA-based supramolecular nanostructures are rapidly advancing in complexity and reproducibility, and are exciting because of their ability to act as scaffolds for other nano- and micro- sized objects, as molecular devices, and in molecular computation.
Those structures used for scaffolding and molecular computation are (generally) formed through a slow temperature annealing process in buffer, allowing the assembly to occur correctly. We have developed a successful isothermal room temperature procedure that reproduces this. It is based on slowly decreasing the concentration of a denaturing agent(formamide), which `simulates' the thermal annealing step. With this process we have reproduced DNA nanotube structures previously realized by Mao et. al. using conventional annealing.
We are currently working to develop this technique with tile-based structures, algorithmic self-assembly, and also DNA origami. In addition, we attempt to create these DNA-based nanofilaments inside vesicles to act as an artificial cytoskeleton.