题目：DNA Nanotechnology: from Fancy Toys to Useful Tools

报告人：魏迪明博士（School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China）

报告时间：2015年2月3日（星期二）13:30—14:30

报告地点：化学馆 120

Abstract:DNA nanotechnology provides a powerful approach for constructing sophisticated synthetic molecular structures and devices. By encoding sequence complementarity into component DNA strands, prescribed structures can be assembled under the appropriate formation conditions. After three decades of development, the complexity of synthetic DNA structures has grown from simple branched junctions formed with a few strands to complex 2D and 3D objects with arbitrarily prescribed geometry composed of increasingly more distinct components up to hundreds of even thousands of strands. Moreover, researchers have demonstrated the construction of dynamic systems, including switches, walkers, circuits, and triggered assembly systems. Additionally, as diverse functional molecules can be modified onto specific sites of DNA structures, DNA nanotechnology has enabled applications such as nano-fabrication, protein structure determination, fluorescent bioimaging, single molecule biophysics, biosynthetic and cell-signaling pathways modulation.

In this talk, I will show how DNA nanotechnology has evolved from fancy molecular toys to useful tools for molecular engineering. Our recent work has demonstrated a simple yet diverse approach to make stationary and dynamic nanostructures with considerable complexity. I am trying to use the newly developed technology to specific applications in material science and life sciences.