Issue 37, 2022

Nucleic acid paranemic structures: a promising building block for functional nanomaterials in biomedical and bionanotechnological applications

Abstract

Over the past few decades, DNA has been recognized as a powerful self-assembling material capable of crafting supramolecular nanoarchitectures with quasi-angstrom precision, which promises various applications in the fields of materials science, nanoengineering, and biomedical science. Notable structural features include biocompatibility, biodegradability, high digital encodability by Watson–Crick base pairing, nanoscale dimension, and surface addressability. Bottom-up fabrication of complex DNA nanostructures relies on the design of fundamental DNA motifs, including parallel (PX) and antiparallel (AX) crossovers. However, paranemic or PX motifs have not been thoroughly explored for the construction of DNA-based nanostructures compared to AX motifs. In this review, we summarize the developments of PX-based DNA nanostructures, highlight the advantages as well as challenges of PX-based assemblies, and give an overview of the structural and chemical features that lend their utilization in a variety of applications. The works presented cover PX-based DNA nanostructures in biological systems, dynamic systems, and biomedical contexts. The possible future advances of PX structures and applications are also summarized, discussed, and postulated.

Graphical abstract: Nucleic acid paranemic structures: a promising building block for functional nanomaterials in biomedical and bionanotechnological applications

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
21 3 2022
Accepted
19 7 2022
First published
25 7 2022

J. Mater. Chem. B, 2022,10, 7460-7472

Author version available

Nucleic acid paranemic structures: a promising building block for functional nanomaterials in biomedical and bionanotechnological applications

J. Y. Lee, Q. Yang, X. Chang, H. Wisniewski, T. R. Olivera, M. Saji, S. Kim, D. Perumal and F. Zhang, J. Mater. Chem. B, 2022, 10, 7460 DOI: 10.1039/D2TB00605G

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