AVS 52nd International Symposium
    Nanometer-Scale Science and Technology Tuesday Sessions
       Session NS+BI-TuA

Paper NS+BI-TuA3
Enzymatic Nanofabrication: Step-wise Synthesis of DNA Scaffolds on Nanopatterned Oligonucleotide Templates

Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 2:40 pm, Room 210

Session: Molecular and Biological Applications of Nanostructures
Presenter: D. Chow, Duke University
Authors: D. Chow, Duke University
W.-K. Lee, Duke University
S. Zauscher, Duke University
A. Chilkoti, Duke University
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Nucleic acid nanopatterns can serve as a template for step-wise synthesis for a variety of complex molecular nanostructures and have significant potential in materials science, molecular electronics, and biosensing. However, most nanofabrication techniques of nucleic acid scaffolds require DNA to be synthesized separately prior to self-assembly or manipulation at the nanoscale. Enzymes that can polymerize DNA are potentially useful molecular tools for the in situ synthesis of DNA scaffolds. Although these proteins are well studied and commercially available, they have not been previously exploited for enzymatic nanofabrication. This study demonstrates that terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase repetitively adds mononucleotides to the 3' end of oligonucleotides on gold substrate nanopatterned by e-beam lithography. Without complex multi-step chemistry or biochemistry, the step-wise synthesis of DNA scaffolds leads to significant extension of DNA. This strategy can be modified to create more complex DNA nanostructures by simply replacing natural mononucleotides with unnatural ones, which serve as specific recognition sites along the single-stranded DNA. This enzyme-mediated nanofabrication methodology offers a new route to selectively dock nanoscale components of interest along the vertical direction with nanometer-level precision, and also provides a foundation for fabrication of hybrid molecular ensembles of biotic and abiotic components.