Encoding hierarchical assembly pathways of proteins with DNA

The structural and functional diversity of materials in nature depends on the controlled assembly of discrete building blocks into complex architectures via specific, multistep, hierarchical assembly pathways. Achieving similar complexity in synthetic materials through hierarchical assembly is challenging due to difficulties with defining multiple recognition areas on synthetic building blocks and controlling the sequence through which those recognition sites direct assembly. Here, we show that we can exploit the chemical anisotropy of proteins and the programmability of DNA ligands to deliberately control the hierarchical assembly of protein-DNA materials. Through DNA sequence design, we introduce orthogonal DNA interactions with disparate interaction strengths ("strong" and "weak") onto specific geometric regions of a model protein, stable protein 1 (Sp1). We show that the spatial encoding of DNA ligands leads to highly directional assembly via strong interactions and that, by design, the first stage of assembly increases the multivalency of weak DNA-DNA interactions that give rise to an emergent second stage of assembly. Furthermore, we demonstrate that judicious DNA design not only directs assembly along a given pathway but can also direct distinct structural outcomes from a single pathway. This combination of protein surface and DNA sequence design allows us to encode the structural and chemical information necessary into building blocks to program their multistep hierarchical assembly. Our findings represent a strategy for controlling the hierarchical assembly of proteins to realize a diverse set of protein-DNA materials by design.