New research describes a method allowing for the automation of DNA origami construction – accelerating and simplifying the process of crafting desired forms.
It is claimed that the advances may open the world of DNA architecture to a broader audience. In recent years DNA origami has enabled the construction of a rapidly growing menagerie of two- and three-dimensional objects, with applications in biomedical and material science.
Lead author Hao Yan said: “DNA origami design has come to the time that we now can draw a form freely and ask the computer to output what is needed to build the target form.”
Yan and have created a fully-autonomous procedure to design all DNA staple sequences needed to fold any free-form 2D scaffolded DNA origami wireframe object. Their algorithm uses wireframe edges consisting of two parallel DNA duplexes and enables the full autonomy of scaffold routing and staple sequence design.
