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Updated: May 25, 2026

Self-assembly of Complex Two-dimensional Shapes from Single-stranded DNA Tiles
Published on: May 8, 2015
In vitro assembly of multiple DNA fragments using successive hybridization
Xinglin Jiang1, Jianming Yang, Haibo Zhang
1Biomaterials Center, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China.
Abstract:
Construction of recombinant DNA from multiple fragments is widely required in molecular biology, especially for synthetic biology purposes. Here we describe a new method, successive hybridization assembling (SHA) which can rapidly do this in a single reaction in vitro. In SHA, DNA fragments are prepared to overlap one after another, so after simple denaturation-renaturation treatment they hybridize in a successive manner and thereby assemble into a recombinant molecule. In contrast to traditional methods, SHA eliminates the need for restriction enzymes, DNA ligases and recombinases, and is sequence-independent. We first demonstrated its feasibility by constructing plasmids from 4, 6 and 8 fragments with high efficiencies, and then applied it to constructing a customized vector and two artificial pathways. As SHA is robust, easy to use and can tolerate repeat sequences, we expect it to be a powerful tool in synthetic biology.
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