Enzyme-guided DNA Sewing Architecture

With the advent of nanotechnology, a variety of nanoarchitectures with varied physicochemical properties have been designed. Owing to the unique characteristics, DNAs have been used as a functional building block for novel nanoarchitecture. In particular, a self-assembly of long DNA molecules via a piece DNA staple has been utilized to attain such constructs. However, it needs many talented prerequisites (e.g., complicated computer program) with fewer yields of products. In addition, it has many limitations to overcome: for instance, (i) thermal instability under moderate environments and (ii) restraint in size caused by the restricted length of scaffold strands. Alternatively, the enzymatic sewing linkage of short DNA blocks is simply designed into long DNA assemblies but it is more error-prone due to the undeveloped sequence data. Here, we present, for the first time, a comprehensive study for directly combining DNA structures into higher DNA sewing constructs through the 5′-end cohesive ligation of T4 enzyme. Inspired by these achievements, the synthesized DNA nanomaterials were also utilized for effective detection and real-time diagnosis of cancer-specific and cytosolic RNA markers. This generalized protocol for generic DNA sewing is expected to be useful in several DNA nanotechnology as well as any nucleic acid-related fields.