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Updated: Apr 1, 2026
Self-Assembly of Gamma-Modified Peptide Nucleic Acids into Complex Nanostructures in Organic Solvent Mixtures
Published on: June 26, 2020
A Case Study of the Likes and Dislikes of DNA and RNA in Self-Assembly
1College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400716 (P.R. China). zuohua@swu.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Programmed self-assembly of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) is an active research area as it promises a general approach for nanoconstruction. Whereas DNA self-assembly has been extensively studied, RNA self-assembly lags much behind. One strategy to boost RNA self-assembly is to adapt the methods of DNA self-assembly for RNA self-assembly because of the chemical and structural similarities of DNA and RNA. However, these two types of molecules are still significantly different. To enable the rational design of RNA self-assembly, a thorough examination of their likes and dislikes in programmed self-assembly is needed. The current work begins to address this task. It was found that similar, two-stranded motifs of RNA and DNA lead to similar, but clearly different nanostructures.
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