Chen J H, Seeman N C
Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York 10003.
Nature. 1991 Apr 18;350(6319):631-3. doi: 10.1038/350631a0.
A principal goal of biotechnology is the assembly of novel biomaterials for analytical, industrial and therapeutic purposes. The advent of stable immobile nucleic acid branched junctions makes DNA a good candidate for building frameworks to which proteins or other functional molecules can be attached and thereby juxtaposed. The addition of single-stranded 'sticky' ends to branched DNA molecules converts them into macromolecular valence clusters that can be ligated together. The edges of these frameworks are double-helical DNA, and the vertices correspond to the branch points of junctions. Here, we report the construction from DNA of a covalently closed cube-like molecular complex containing twelve equal-length double-helical edges arranged about eight vertices. Each of the six 'faces' of the object is a single-stranded cyclic molecule, doubly catenated to four neighbouring strands, and each vertex is connected by an edge to three others. Each edge contains a unique restriction site for analytical purposes. This is the first construction of a closed polyhedral object from DNA.
生物技术的一个主要目标是组装用于分析、工业和治疗目的的新型生物材料。稳定的固定核酸分支连接的出现使DNA成为构建可附着蛋白质或其他功能分子并使其并列的框架的良好候选者。向分支DNA分子添加单链“粘性”末端会将它们转化为可连接在一起的大分子价簇。这些框架的边缘是双螺旋DNA，顶点对应于连接点的分支点。在此，我们报告了由DNA构建的共价封闭的立方体形分子复合物，该复合物包含围绕八个顶点排列的十二条等长双螺旋边缘。该物体的六个“面”中的每一个都是单链环状分子，与四条相邻链双重连环，并且每个顶点通过一条边与其他三个顶点相连。每条边都包含一个用于分析目的的独特限制位点。这是首次从DNA构建封闭的多面体物体。
