Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

DNA, a fundamental molecule of life, is an attractive material for nanoengineering. Because of the defined double-helical structure and highly programmable nature of DNA, a variety of nanostructures can be created through the sequence design. In the past decade, “DNA origami” method, in which a long single-stranded DNA is folded into a desired shape with many short oligonucleotides, has been developed based on the well-established structural DNA nanotechnology. The method is now applied for the bottom-up construction of various nanoscale objects and is used in the development of molecular devises and in the field of synthetic biology.

The aim of my research is not only to develop functional DNA nanostructures, but also to organize them into systems that have unique properties and functions which cannot be achieved by an individual nanostructure. Inspired by clustering of membrane proteins in living cells, in my study, DNA origami nanostructures are further self-assembled into higher order structures at lipid bilayer/solution interfaces. By combining this technique with chemical and biochemical approaches for the modification of nucleic acids, I try to produce multifunctional highly-ordered origami structures which possess stimuli-responsive characters, conformation changeability, signal transduction capability, self-repairability, etc. Through this research, I am also aiming to understand mechanisms of interaction between nanostructured DNAs and other biomacromolecules.