Structural DNA Nanotechnology

The simple Watson-Crick base pairing rule of A-T/C-G of DNA has created a beautiful biological realm. DNA nanotechnology extends DNA's conventional role from genetic blueprint to a building block in constructing functional nanoarchitectures. DNA self-assembly in building programmable nanopatterns has been attracting intense attention and holds great promise for building novel designed nanoarchitectures. In this review, we summarize the principle of DNA self-assembly, introduce some of the exciting progress of structural DNA nanotechnology in recent years, which include construction of DNA 2D patterns and 3D nanostructures, DNA-directed assembly of multicomponent 2D nanoarrays and 3D nanoarchitectures. At the end, we offer the outlook of the ever-growing frontiers of DNA nanotechnology.