Recycling DNA origami nanostructures

DNA origami is a technique that creates precisely shaped nanostructures. Recycling the DNA strands that form these structures could help make this form of nanoscale engineering more cost effective ( Nano Lett. 2024, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c02695 ). To assemble these minuscule structures, researchers first create a scaffold: a long piece of single-stranded DNA with a carefully designed sequence of bases. Then they add hundreds of shorter DNA chunks that each bind to specific sections of the scaffold, acting as staples that help to fold the long strand into a predetermined 3D shape. Researchers typically use 10 times as many staples as actually get incorporated in the finished structure and then discard the excess. “I’ve thrown away staples for almost a decade now,” says Wolfgang G. Pfeifer at the Ohio State University, part of the team behind the work. DNA origami is being developed for applications including biosensors, drug delivery platforms, templates