Issue 34, 2023

The role of size in biostability of DNA tetrahedra

Abstract

The potential for using DNA nanostructures for drug delivery applications requires understanding and ideally tuning their biostability. Here we investigate how biological degradation varies with size of a DNA nanostructure. We designed DNA tetrahedra of three edge lengths ranging from 13 to 20 bp and analyzed nuclease resistance for two nucleases and biostability in fetal bovine serum. We found that DNase I had similar digestion rates across sizes but appeared to incompletely digest the smallest tetrahedron, while T5 exonuclease was notably slower to digest the largest tetrahedron. In fetal bovine serum, the 20 bp tetrahedron was degraded four times faster than the 13 bp. These results show that DNA nanostructure size can influence nuclease degradation, but suggest a complex relationship that is nuclease specific.

Graphical abstract: The role of size in biostability of DNA tetrahedra

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
06 Mar 2023
Accepted
03 Apr 2023
First published
06 Apr 2023

Chem. Commun., 2023,59, 5083-5085

The role of size in biostability of DNA tetrahedra

J. Vilcapoma, A. Patel, A. R. Chandrasekaran and K. Halvorsen, Chem. Commun., 2023, 59, 5083 DOI: 10.1039/D3CC01123B

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