dna as molecular lego brick (part 1)
TRANSCRIPT
me
the best way to reach me
lab website
my lab my university
do not print!
this modified presentation is designed to be viewed on screenprinting this document will waste a lot of ink
People uses wood as engineering materialfor man-made constructions
utilization of BIOLOGICAL material for UNNATURAL purpose
is NOT a strange practice in our daily lives
example 1: wood
▲ tree furniture ▼
utilization of BIOLOGICAL material for UNNATURAL purpose
is NOT a strange practice in our daily lives
example 1: wood
distance between neighboring base pair
= 3.4 Å
1 full turn ~ 10.5 bp
diameter~ 20 Å
DNAdouble-helix
base pair
3’-AGTCTTCGAATGC-5’
5’-TCAGAAGCTTACG-3’
DNAbase pair
watson crick base pairs: A with T ; C with G
this is how dna stores information
3’-AGTCTTCGAATGC-5’
5’-TCAGAAGCTTACG-3’
DNA
base pair
most of the times, we use this restricted representation,
where horizontal line represents a base pair
Chen and Seeman, Nature 350, 631 (1991)
note that DNA does not have to be
in a single long double helix form
single stranded DNA octahedron, William Shih, Harvard
another example of unnatural dna structures
shih, Quispe, joyce, nature 427, 618 (2004)
Why DNA?
• Historical perspective: RNA/DNA world is widely accepted as predecessor to our current protein world
• DNA is programmable
• Robust computational prediction for DNA structure, energetics, and kintetics is available.
• Easy to handle: spontaneous degradation for DNA is slow
• Cheap
• Superstructures can be made big enough for microscopy
the next few slides should make the idea of programming dna molecules clear
Designing DNA molecular complexesNadrian Seeman, 1980’s
let’s say
the OUTPUT of our molecular program
is this Y-shaped DNA structure
Designing DNA molecular complexesNadrian Seeman, 1980’s
GATTACA
CTAATGT
GATTACA
CTAATGTACTGGTG
TGACCAC
TGACCAC
ACTGGTG
TAGGCAG
ATCCGTC
ATCCGTC
TAGGCAG
one way to embed the program that
specify Y-shaped output is shown abovE
Yin et al, Nature 2008
Seeing is Believing! DNA superstructures can be made large enough for microscopy
i hope at this point you will have
sufficient background
to fully APPRECIATE the achievements
of dna nanotechnology
please take a look at the next part of my talk