Single molecule measurements of a DNA origami polymer-like structure


  Efrat Roth  ,  Yuval Garini  
Bar-Ilan University

DNA origami is an enabling technique that has been developed during the last decade. Using this technique, one can design almost any kind of form and 3-dimensional structure and build many copies of it in a nanometer scale in a very exact way. Little has been studied about dynamic properties of systems constructed by DNA origami. A polymer-like structure was built using the DNA origami method, which is a new concept. The polymer consists of rigid rods connected to each other by single-stranded DNA. The structure allows each rod a wide degree of freedom to move so that it mimics a polymer that may be described by the freely joint chain or other polymer models. The Polymer-like structure was measured by using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The polymer conformations were studied and it allows us to check whether the polymer's properties match the expectations according to the model and the previous measurements of dsDNA. The synthesized polymer-like structures can be used later on for further biophysical studies, as building blocks for biosensors and even for biomedical applications.