ABSTRACT
In recent nanotechnology research, biomacromolecules have been used to construct a variety of nano-objects. In particular, DNA molecules have been vigorously employed to build characteristic nanostructures because of their simple design principles, governed by the Watson-Crick base pairing rules. To date, DNA-based nanostructures have ranged from two-dimensional (2D) patterns to three-dimensional (3D) objects (Lin et al. 2009; Seeman 2010). Both static structures and dynamic nanostructures, which undergo conformational changes, can be achieved through DNA strand displacement (e.g., DNA-mediated lock and key). The construction of functional DNAs with target-binding sequences (e.g., aptamers) that take the form of 2D and 3D DNA objects has also been reported (Teller and Willner 2010). In addition, single-molecule analyses of the biochemical reaction by using DNA origami scaffolds have been performed (Rajendran et al. 2012).
