Brief History of DNA Nanotechnology - DNA Nanotechnology: From Structure to Function - page 2

Chapter 1
Brief History of DNA Nanotechnology
Chunhai Fan and Di Li
DNA is the acronym of deoxyribonucleic acid and probably one of the most
well-known scientific terms. DNA is in fact a biopolymer consisting of repeating
units, i.e., four types of nucleotides, adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and
cytosine (C). Each nucleotide is composed of nucleobases (informally, bases )and
sugars. These nucleobases are linked via ester bonds between the sugar and the
phosphate groups, forming the backbone of DNA polymers. Two DNA polymers
with complementary base sequences can be paired following the strict Watson-Crick
rule, A-T and G-C, resulting in the formation of the well-known DNA double helix.
DNA is generally regarded as carriers of genetic information encoded by the
sequence of four nucleoides, which is then translated to RNA that directs protein
synthesis. On the other hand, DNA can also be regarded as a kind of structurally
precise nanomaterials. In double-stranded DNA, the distance between two bases
is 0.34 nm, and the helix completes one turn for each 10.5 base pairs (bp). The
diameter of the B-form DNA duplex is 2 nm. More importantly, the structure and
conformation of DNA can be rationally programmed by the sequence design. Taking
these features together, DNA molecules can be used as a versatile nanoscale building
block for construction of artificial supramolecular nanostructures with tailorable
functions [ 1 ]. Nadrian Seeman proposed innovative ideas of exploiting the unique
molecular recognition properties for nanoconstruction in the early 1980s [ 2 , 3 ].
In his famous pioneering work, he constructed artificial nucleic acid architectures
using synthetic DNA branched junction motifs containing three and four arms,
which has been considered as the foundation work of DNA nanotechnology [ 4 - 6 ].
The area of DNA nanotechnology grew rapidly in the 1990s, partially because of
the industrial availability of chemically synthesized DNA molecules with arbitrary
sequences. Nowadays, it is possible to order almost all components needed for
C. Fan ( )•D.Li( )
Laboratory of Physical Biology, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China
e-mail: [e-mail] ; [e-mail]