Rapid Folding of DNA into Nanoscale Shapes at Constant Temperature

Abstract

Speeding Up Nanoscale DNA Assembly An impressive array of three-dimensional (3D) nanoscale objects has been assembled by folding a long, single-stranded DNA scaffold by binding of short DNA staples. However, these processes tend to be slow and inefficient. Sobczak et al. (p. 1458 ) examined the folding process with an intercalating fluorescence dye to measure the formation of double-stranded DNA in folding processes or single-stranded DNA in unfolding. Reaction conditions were identified that sped up folding by orders of magnitude and increased yields of the 3D nanoscale objects to nearly 100%.