A method to study in vivo stability of DNA nanostructures

DNA nanostructures are rationally designed, synthetic, nanoscale assemblies obtained from one or more DNA sequences by their self-assembly. Due to the molecularly programmable as well as modular nature of DNA, such designer DNA architectures have great potential for in cellulo and in vivo applications. However, demonstrations of functionality in living systems necessitates a method to assess the in vivo stability of the relevant nanostructures. Here, we outline a method to quantitatively assay the stability and lifetime of various DNA nanostructures in vivo. This exploits the property of intact DNA nanostructures being uptaken by the coelomocytes of the multicellular model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. These studies reveal that the present fluorescence based assay in coelomocytes of C. elegans is an useful in vivo test bed for measuring DNA nanostructure stability.