Controlled assembly of dendrimer-like DNA

DNA possesses many desirable chemical/physical properties as a polymeric material. With the myriad of tools available to manipulate DNA(1), there is great potential for using DNA as a generic instead of a genetic material. Although much progress has been made in DNA computing(2-4) and DNA nanotechnology(5-19), the full achievement of DNA-based materials has not yet been realized. As almost all DNA molecules are either linear or circular, to rationally construct DNA materials one must first create additional shapes of DNA as basic building blocks. In addition, these DNA building blocks must be readily incorporated into larger structures in a controlled manner. Here, we show the controlled assembly of dendrimer-like DNA (DL-DNA) from Y-shaped DNA (Y-DNA). The synthesis of Y-DNA and controlled assembly of DL-DNA were robust and efficient; the resulting DL-DNA was stable and almost monodisperse. The multivalent DNA dendrimers can be either isotropic or anisotropic, providing great potential to link other entities.