DNA Aptamers for Functionalisation of DNA Origami Nanostructures

Abstract

DNA origami has emerged in recent years as a powerful technique for designing and building 2D and 3D nanostructures. While the breadth of structures that have been produced is impressive, one of the remaining challenges, especially for DNA origami structures intended to carry out useful biomedical tasks in vivo, is to endow them with the ability to detect and respond to molecules of interest. Target molecules may be disease indicators or cell surface receptors, and the responses may include conformational changes leading to release of therapeutically relevant cargo. Nucleic acid aptamers are ideally suited to this task and are beginning to be used in DNA origami designs. In this review we consider examples of uses of DNA aptamers in DNA origami structures and summarise what is currently understood regarding aptamer-origami integration. We review three major roles for aptamers in such applications: protein immobilisation, triggering of structural transformation, and cell targeting. Finally, we consider future perspectives for DNA aptamer integration with DNA origami.

Delivering DNA Origami to Cells

“…One way to achieve this is to use DNA aptamers; DNA sequences that are analogous to antibodies and which can be produced in vitro using the SELEX technique [46,47]. A number of aptamers have been produced including against thrombin [48] and lactate dehydrogenase from Plasmodium falciparum [49] with both having been shown to be able to function as part of DNA origami structures [33,[50][51][52] and general principles for successful aptamer integration are beginning to be understood [53]. In the field of cell delivery, aptamers have been used to target cancer cells.…”

Evolution of abiotic cubane chemistries in a nucleic acid aptamer allows selective recognition of a malaria biomarker

“…Even using the simple natural nucleotides of DNA and RNA one can select and evolve aptamers with nanomolar and even picomolar binding affinities and surprising discriminatory specificity (4). Such aptamers are finding applications in therapeutics (5), diagnostics (6), biosensing (7), and nanotechnology (8) and can display numerous advantages relative to antibodies (9).…”

Obtaining Precise Molecular Information via DNA Nanotechnology

“…Aptamers are oligonucleotides that bind specifically to proteins, small molecules, and a range of other targets [ 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ] ( Figure 2 C). Utilizing the affinity between aptamers and target molecules, dynamic DNA devices have been constructed by designing the actuation part of the devices with incorporation of aptamer sequences [ 67 , 71 , 72 ]. Upon the reaction with targets, the aptamer can induce an allosteric effect and allow the devices to be actuated.…”