POLY 116 |
| With the continuous decrease in feature dimensions required by semiconductor manufacturing, there are significant efforts focused on developing methods to self-assemble nanomaterials reproducibly, in high yield, and in a cost effective manner. Recently, Rothemund demonstrated a versatile technique to fabricate mesoscale DNA structures by reacting hundreds of short oligonucleotides with long single stranded DNA extracted from a M13 bacteriophage (Nature, 440, p. 297, 2006). Because the entire genetic sequence and make-up of the DNA meso-structures are known, inorganic nanomaterials can be positioned onto a single DNA template with nanometer precision. The objectives of the project presented here were to self-assemble 100nm DNA rectangles that have free poly-adenine strands located at specific sites on the individual DNA structures and to use these free poly-adenine strands as attachment sites for gold nanoparticles functionalized with the complementary poly-thymine strands. All of the DNA structures and functionalized gold nanoparticles were characterized by both atomic force microscopy and agarose gel electrophoresis. While much of the results obtained demonstrate that adding modifications within individual DNA structures do not alter their ability to self-assemble into the correct architecture, there is some evidence to believe that a finite number of free strands of DNA can be added without altering the overall stability of the DNA structures. Furthermore, preliminary results show that the successful attachment of gold nanoparticles to the DNA structures is influenced by both the length of free DNA as well as its orientation from the DNA structure. |
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Undergraduate Research in Polymer Science
6:00 PM-8:00 PM, Sunday, April 6, 2008 Morial Convention Center -- Hall A, Poster
Division of Polymer Chemistry |