Synthetic DNAs have proved to be extraordinarily useful as construction building blocks for nanostructuring. Due to the highly specific complementary interactions between designable nucleic acid strains and the great mechanical rigidity of the short double helices, these genetic materials has been rapidly developed in the last few decades for nanostructuring from two-dimensional to three dimentional structures, and even smart nanomachines. Particularly, precise design of artificial DNA sequences and computer-assisted prediction of DNA double helix folding opens access to a large variety of arbitrary 2-D and 3-D nanostructures, denoted as DNA origami. This technique has been investigated extensively for bottom-up nanopatterning of proteins, nanoparticles, and chromophores. In this context, capitalizing on DNA origami as a template for bottom-up fabrication of precise polymer nanostructures and inorganic nanostructures is highly valuable as a new strategy for precision nanofabrication. Our research focus on developing DNA templated synthesis of precision nanomaterials with sophisticated structure and functions, and investigating their applications in nanomedicine.
Representative publications:
1. Yu Tokura, Yanyan Jiang, Alexander Welle, Martina H Stenzel, Katarzyna Krzemien, Jens Michaelis, Christopher Barner-Kowollik, Yuzhou Wu*, Tanja Weil*, Bottom-up Fabrication of Nanopatterned Polymers on DNA Origami Nanotile by In-situ Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2016, 55, 5692-5697. (Frontispiece)
2. Tao Zhang, Andre Neumann, Jessica Lindlau, Yuzhou Wu, Goutam Pramanik, Boris Naydenov, Fedor Jelezko, Florian Schüder, Sebastian Huber, Marinus Huber, Florian Stehr, Alexander Högele*, Tanja Weil* and Tim Liedl*, DNA-based self-assembly of fluorescent nanodiamonds, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2015, 31, 9776–9779.
