The property of nucleic acids to recognize and specifically bind to complementary sequence is the basis of DNA dendrimer assembly. Polyprobe DNA dendrimers are assembled via sequential hybridization of designed DNA components. Pairwise hybridization of these strands results in the formation of "monomers" which have 4 single stranded "arms" and a double stranded "waist". The outer surface of each layer has 2 types of single stranded arms. The molecular scaffolding grows geometrically with each sequential layer of hybridization. DNA dendrimers have been assembled ranging in size from a few hundred bases (a 1-layer DNA dendrimer) to several million bases (12-layer dendrimers) Continue

1 Layer