Technological watch

By rationally adjusting the weaving modes of point?star tiles, the curvature inherent in the tiles can be changed, and various DNA nanostructures can be assembled, such as planar wireframe meshes, perforated wireframe tubes, and curved wireframe polyhedra. Based on the weaving and tiling architectures for traditional point?star tiles with the core arm length at two DNA half?turns, we improved the weaving modes of our newly reported four?point?star tiles with the core arm length at three half?turns to adjust their curvature and rigidity for assembling 2D arrays of DNA grids and tubes. Following our previous terms and methods to analyze the structural details of E?tiling tubes, we used the chiral indices (n,m) to describe the most abundant tube of typical assemblies; especially, we applied both one?locus and/or dual?locus biotin/streptavidin (SA) labeling strategies to define the configurations of two specific tubes, along with the absolute conformations of their component tiles. Such structural details of the DNA tubes composed of tiles with addressable concave and convex faces and packing directions should help us understand their physio?chemical and biological properties, and therefore promote their applications in drug delivery, biocatalysis, biomedicine, etc.