Multispecific DNA coatings for self-assembly

DNA-coated particles are promising building blocks for functional and finite-sized assemblies because they can be programmed to exhibit orthogonal interactions through the sequence-specific hybridization of DNA strands. To fully exploit this programmability, it is important to develop particles with coatings that incorporate multiple distinct DNA sequences in tunable ratios and to understand how the coating composition influences self-assembly. Here, we compare two strategies for grafting multiple DNA sequences in tunable and well-defined ratios onto micron-sized colloidal particles. We found that a method based on click chemistry yielded mixed coatings with large batch-to-batch variation in composition, while a method based on isothermal DNA polymerization produced coatings with predictable compositions and a precision of a few percent, but it requires reaction rate measurements for each new sequence in the coating. Our self-assembly experiments showed that, even with precise control over coating composition, equilibrium co-assembly of multiple types of DNA-coated particles is limited by the number of interactions that are reversible within the same narrow temperature window. This finding highlights the need to explicitly incorporate sequential assembly pathways into structure design, with coating composition dictating the order of binding events. Together, our results show how systematic tuning of interaction strength and sequential assembly through multispecific DNA coatings is a prerequisite for the experimental realization of finite-sized and dynamic structures that have so far remained largely theoretical.