Toward electronically-functional, self-assembling DNA nanostructures

Recent work has demonstrated that DNA, ordinarily considered a weak conductor, can be functionalized to carry electronic charge by site-specific incorporation of single silver ions inside the double helix via the non-canonical pairing of mismatched cytosines through Ag + coordination: (dC:Ag + :dC) Through the alteration of sequence composition and cation availability, a variety of nanowires can be synthesized with tuneable length, ion distribution, and uniformity. These wires are more thermostable than Watson-Crick DNA, can shield intercalated Ag + from aqueous solvents, and are able to form in the absence of cluster contamination. We use computational sequence design algorithms to introduce nonlinear geometry to these nanowires, with the goal of creating self-assembling DNA nanostructures that may have potential for neural architectures from electrically-functional oligonucleotide components.