Triangulated Wireframe Structures Assembled Using Single-Stranded DNA Tiles

The field of structural DNA nanotechnology offers a wide range of design strategies with which to build structures with a desired aspect ratio, size, and shape. Compared with traditional close-packed DNA structures, triangulated wireframe structures require less material per surface or volume unit and improve the stability in biologically relevant conditions due to the reduced electrostatic repulsion. Herein, we expand the design space of the DNA single-stranded tile method to cover a range of anisotropic, finite, triangulated wireframe structures as well as a number of one-dimensional crystalline assemblies. These structures are composed of six-arm junctions with a single double helix as connecting edges that assemble in physiologically relevant salinities. For a reliable folding of the structures, single-stranded spacers 2–4 nucleotides long have to be introduced in the junction connecting neighboring arms. Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations using the oxDNA model suggests that the spacers prevent the stacking of DNA helices, thereby facilitating the assembly of planar geometries.