Department of Chemistry and Centre for Self-assembled Chemical Structures, McGill University, 801 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3A 0B8, Canada.
Nat Chem. 2016 Feb;8(2):162-70. doi: 10.1038/nchem.2420. Epub 2016 Jan 4.
DNA nanotechnology offers unparalleled precision and programmability for the bottom-up organization of materials. This approach relies on pre-assembling a DNA scaffold, typically containing hundreds of different strands, and using it to position functional components. A particularly attractive strategy is to employ DNA nanostructures not as permanent scaffolds, but as transient, reusable templates to transfer essential information to other materials. To our knowledge, this approach, akin to top-down lithography, has not been examined. Here we report a molecular printing strategy that chemically transfers a discrete pattern of DNA strands from a three-dimensional DNA structure to a gold nanoparticle. We show that the particles inherit the DNA sequence configuration encoded in the parent template with high fidelity. This provides control over the number of DNA strands and their relative placement, directionality and sequence asymmetry. Importantly, the nanoparticles produced exhibit the site-specific addressability of DNA nanostructures, and are promising components for energy, information and biomedical applications.
DNA 纳米技术为材料的自下而上组织提供了无与伦比的精度和可编程性。这种方法依赖于预先组装 DNA 支架，通常包含数百种不同的链，并使用它来定位功能组件。一种特别有吸引力的策略是将 DNA 纳米结构不仅用作永久性支架，而且用作可重复使用的临时模板，将重要信息转移到其他材料上。据我们所知，这种类似于自上而下的光刻的方法尚未被研究过。在这里，我们报告了一种分子印刷策略，该策略可以从三维 DNA 结构将离散的 DNA 链图案化学转移到金纳米粒子上。我们表明，粒子以高保真度继承了母体模板中编码的 DNA 序列配置。这提供了对 DNA 链数量及其相对位置、方向性和序列不对称性的控制。重要的是，所产生的纳米粒子表现出 DNA 纳米结构的特定位置可寻址性，并且是能源、信息和生物医学应用的有前途的组件。
