ABSTRACT
DNA-based nanotechnologies are bottom-up approaches that use nucleic acids as building blocks. The high specificity of WatsonCrick interactions is the key element to understand the huge range of diverse nanometric constructions that have been designed and experimentally characterized so far. In this context, the “origami” strategy, initially introduced as a generic method to design almost arbitrary planar shapes, is particularly important [1]. Small oligonucleotides staples recognizing specific sequences drive the folding of a long DNA strand. A useful property of DNA origamis is the possibility to arrange, with nanometric precision, any kind of molecular-sized objects that can be bound in some way to DNA. A nonexhaustive list of these objects includes gold nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, aptamers, and proteins. It is obvious that this property makes DNA origamis particularly promising as a platform to spatially arrange proteins with high precision and specificity. The
goal of this chapter is to provide a glimpse of published work in these directions, both in vitro and in vivo, as well as to point out the possible extensions and expected difficulties.
