DNA origami framework developed by field Professor team of Nanjing University leads the three-dimensional precise assembly of colloidal particles

The self-assembly of colloidal particles into regular three-dimensional arrays in the solution phase has greatly promoted the research progress of functional materials construction Generally speaking, the self-assembly of materials depends on the interaction between building blocks and the shape and nature of building blocks themselves However, for biomolecules, due to their complex shape and the specific distribution of surface functionalization sites, it is very difficult to construct three-dimensional ordered structure by traditional methods In the past decade, DNA, as a polymer with definite molecular structure on micro scale, has successfully guided a series of inorganic colloidal particles to realize programmable self-assembly The core of this method is the combination of colloid and single strand DNA, which is assembled by complementary pairing of bases between single strands Although the method is accurate, it can not separate the intrinsic properties of nanoparticles such as size, shape, surface structure from the assembly process, which is still not universal for the precise assembly of inorganic or biological molecules with complex surface structure Therefore, building a general platform for assembling colloidal particles with different physical and chemical properties has become a major challenge in the field of self-assembly Recently, nature materials magazine published online the latest research results of "ordered three dimensional nanomaterials using DNA expressed and value controlled material voxels" based on DNA origami frame structure in the construction of colloidal particle assembly platform by Nanjing University field Professor research group and Columbia University Oleg Gang Professor research group In this study, the polyhedral DNA origami framework is used as the construction module, and the nanoparticles to be assembled are loaded into the DNA origami framework as the object molecules Through the assembly of the DNA origami framework, the indirect assembly of the nanoparticles contained inside is realized One of the key difficulties in implementing this strategy is to control the design of vertices of polyhedral DNA origami frame structure and the relationship between vertex connection and structure arrangement Field professor and others selected three DNA origami frame structures with different vertex numbers, which are tetrahedron, octahedron and cube A series of crystal structures with different symmetry, including simple cube, body centered cube, face centered cube and diamond crystal structure, were obtained by hybrid assembly between vertices Taking the octahedral DNA origami structure as an example, we have self-assembled highly ordered three-dimensional crystals, which show that the three-dimensional ordered lattice can be completely constructed by a fixed shape DNA framework Based on this, gold nanoparticles, quantum dots and biological enzymes are contained in DNA origami framework as the object, and self-assembly of different symmetry structures is realized with the assembly of DNA origami framework structure Through the electron microscope and small angle X-ray scattering characterization, the highly ordered assembly of different nano object particles has been confirmed, which also proves the universality and universality of the DNA origami framework for building blocks In order to further explore the stability of this assembly structure and the prospect of practical application, two different materials were synthesized by using this platform, including the optical system assembled by quantum dots with different excitation wavelengths and the enzyme cascade catalytic network obtained by the co crystallization of glucose oxidase (GOx) and horseradish peroxide (HRP) It is found that the two architectures synthesized by this platform have better stability and application potential in practical application To sum up, the general platform of functional object self-assembly based on DNA origami framework proposed in this work has great universality and universality, and has the potential to be extended to the fields of catalysis, biological and inorganic materials research, super materials and information storage equipment manufacturing At the same time, this achievement has also been greatly supported by the high-level talent plan of the Central Organization Department, Jiangsu Provincial Youth Fund, Nanjing University double first-class construction and other funds.