Symposium NN: DNA Nanotechnology

2012 MRS Spring Meeting logo

DNA Nanotechnology

The development of novel strategies for controlled bottom-up fabrication of artificial nanostructures with tailored electronic and optical properties increasingly involves synthesis routes that make use of the unique self-assembly and molecular recognition capabilities of biomolecules.  This bottom-up approach has enormous value in the development of molecular scaffolds with resolution far exceeding current lithographic methods.  In particular, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) can be considered as a basic building block for nanostructure fabrication because the specific base pairing permits the programming of its intra- and intermolecular associations, and the build-up of rationally designed supramolecular structures with addressable binding sites for functional groups, proteins, and nanoparticles.

Structural DNA nanotechnology, which attracted much attention in the past few years, has opened new opportunities for massive parallel construction of different nanoscopic objects, or nanoarrays, with complex geometry or patterns via DNA self assembly.  In a recent approach, genomic DNA has been exploited to assemble structures of variable geometry in one, two, or three dimensions by so-called DNA origami.  In general, structures assembled in this fashion can be modified in a number of ways to obtain functional materials.  It has been demonstrated that, by incorporating functional groups, self-assembled DNA nanoarrays can serve as an excellent flexible platform to assemble other nanosized species, such as metal nanoparticles, antibodies, and proteins.

Thus, DNA nanotechnology is a rapidly emerging field, allowing synthesizing DNA nanostructures in a well-defined fashion. This symposium will address the issue of transforming these artificial structures into building blocks with novel chemical, optical, and biological functionality, which is considered to be the largest challenge in the field of the near future.

Session topics will include:

  • DNA origami
  • Mechanical properties of artificial DNA constructs
  • DNA-based hybrid materials
  • DNA-based photonic and sensor devices

Invited speakers include:

Thomas Carell (LMU München, Germany), Jennifer Cha (Univ. of California, San Diego), Deborah Fygenson (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara), Oleg Gang (Brookhaven National Lab), Kurt Vesterager Gothelf (Aarhus Univ., Denmark), Ulrich Keyser (Univ. of Cambridge, United Kingdom), Yan Liu (Arizona State Univ.), Clemens Richert (Univ. Stuttgart, Germany), Paul Rothemund (California Inst. of Technology), Nadrian Seeman (New York Univ.), Ralf Seidel (Technische Univ. Dresden, Germany), Oliver Seitz (Humboldt Univ. Berlin, Germany), William Shih (Harvard Univ.), Mitsuhiko Shionoya (Univ. of Tokyo, Japan), Friedrich Simmel (Technische Univ. München, Germany), Yung Doug Suh (Korea Research Inst. of Chemical Technology, S. Korea), Gijs Wuite (Vrije Univ. Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

Symposium Organizers

Michael Mertig
Technische Universität Dresden
Institute of Physical Chemistry
D-01062 Dresden, Germany
Tel 49-351-479-40-294, Fax 49-351-479-40-299
michael.mertig@tu-dresden.de 

Hao Yan
Arizona State University
Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Tempe, AZ 85287-5001
Tel 480-727-8570, Fax 480-965-2747
hao.yan@asu.edu 

Itamar Willner
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Institute of Chemistry
Jerusalem 91904, Israel
Tel 972-2-6585272, Fax 972-2-6527715
willnea@vms.huji.ac.il 

Hendrik Dietz
Technische Universität München
Dept. of Physics
James-Franck-Str. 1
D-85748 Garching, Germany
Tel 49-89-289-11615, Fax 49-89-289-12523
dietz@ph.tum.de 

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