Harnessing a paper-folding mechanism for reconfigurable DNA origami
Myoungseok Kim, Chanseok Lee, Kyounghwa Jeon, Jae Young Lee, Young-Joo Kim, Jae Gyung Lee, Hyunsu Kim, Maenghyo Cho & Do-Nyun Kim
Nature 619, 78–86 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06181-7
The paper-folding mechanism has been widely adopted in building of reconfigurable macroscale systems because of its unique capabilities and advantages in programming variable shapes and stiffness into a structure. However, it has barely been exploited in the construction of molecular-level systems owing to the lack of a suitable design principle, even though various dynamic structures based on DNA self-assembly have been developed. Here we propose a method to harness the paper-folding mechanism to create reconfigurable DNA origami structures. The main idea is to build a reference, planar wireframe structure whose edges follow a crease pattern in paper folding so that it can be folded into various target shapes. We realized several paper-like folding and unfolding patterns using DNA strand displacement with high yield. Orthogonal folding, repeatable folding and unfolding, folding-based microRNA detection and fluorescence signal control were demonstrated. Stimuli-responsive folding and unfolding triggered by pH or light-source change were also possible. Moreover, by employing hierarchical assembly we could expand the design space and complexity of the paper-folding mechanism in a highly programmable manner. Because of its high programmability and scalability, we expect that the proposed paper-folding-based reconfiguration method will advance the development of complex molecular systems.
