Folding and characterization of a Bio-responsive robot from DNA origami

Yaniv Amir, Almogit Abu-Horowitz, Ido Bachelet

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

The DNA nanorobot is a hollow hexagonal nanometric device, designed to open in response to specific stimuli and present cargo sequestered inside. Both stimuli and cargo can be tailored according to specific needs. Here we describe the DNA nanorobot fabrication protocol, with the use of the DNA origami technique. The procedure initiates by mixing short single-strand DNA staples into a stock mixture which is then added to a long, circular, single-strand DNA scaffold in presence of a folding buffer. A standard thermo cycler is programmed to gradually lower the mixing reaction temperature to facilitate the staples-to-scaffold annealing, which is the guiding force behind the folding of the nanorobot. Once the 60 hr folding reaction is complete, excess staples are discarded using a centrifugal filter, followed by visualization via agarose-gel electrophoresis (AGE). Finally, successful fabrication of the nanorobot is verified by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), with the use of uranyl-formate as negative stain.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere51272
JournalJournal of Visualized Experiments
Volume2015
Issue number106
DOIs
StatePublished - 3 Dec 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Journal of Visualized Experiments.

Keywords

  • Aptamers
  • Chemistry
  • DNA nanotechnology
  • DNA origami
  • Issue 106
  • Nanorobotics
  • Programmable nanodevices
  • Self-assembly
  • Synthetic biology

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