AI Summary
This article discusses how Northwestern investigators have altered DNA structure and flexibility through chemical manipulation to create new materials for medical and life science applications. The study demonstrates the creation of different shapes, flexibilities, and reactivities by designing DNA systems. Researchers used protein-DNA conjugates that can form monomeric, dimeric, and polymeric structures by modifying DNA chemistry. This research highlights the potential of DNA flexibility in creating novel biomaterials.
Northwestern investigators have demonstrated how manipulating DNA chemistry can alter its structure and flexibility and enable the realization of new materials useful in medicine and the life sciences, according to a study published in Science Advances.
The team was led by Chad Mirkin, Ph.D., professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology.
“This study serves as a proof-of-principle to demonstrate how the researcher can strategically design and prepare DNA systems whose structures can be toggled to realize architectures with different shapes, flexibilities and reactivities,” said Zhenyu (Henry) Han, a graduate student in the Mirkin laboratory and lead author of the study.
During biological processes such as DNA transcription, DNA can bend itself to form a circle through the process of DNA cyclization. This allows the DNA to interact with