Episode Summary: 

DNA is an ideal molecule for storing information in our genomes because it’s stable, programmable, and well understood. The same qualities make DNA a great building block or construction material for nanoscale biomolecular structures that have nothing to do with our genome, like molecular scaffolds created by folding DNA into 2D and 3D shapes. This technology is known as DNA origami.

However, the practical applications of DNA origami are limited by spontaneous growth and poor reaction yields. Anastasia developed a method that uses crisscross DNA polymerization of single-stranded DNA slats or DNA origami tiles to assemble DNA structures in a seed-dependent manner. This work may be useful to produce ultrasensitive, next-generation diagnostics or in programmable biofabrication at the multi-micron scale.

Search Keywords: fifty years, bio, translation, ayush noori, ashton trotman grant, dna origami, dna, monomers, anastasia ershova, structures, diagnostics, proteins, micron scale, nucleation, biology, nanoscale

Episode Notes:

About the Guest 

• Anastasia is a PhD candidate at Harvard University, currently working on DNA nanotechnology in William Shih's lab at the Wyss Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
• She received her bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University.
• During her PhD at Harvard, she co-founded the Molecular Programming Interest Group, an international community of students in the molecular programming, DNA computing and related fields.

Impact 

• DNA Origami will provide us with a plethora of new information on biology and physics.
• By manipulating that data on the nanoscale, we can get answers to a lot of questions in the future.
• Quick diagnostics can enable people all over the world to quickly get diagnosis-related answers and seek targeted treatment.

Papers

• Robust nucleation control via crisscross polymerization of highly coordinated DNA slats
• Multi-micron crisscross structures from combinatorially assembled DNA-origami slats