DNA duplex cage structures with icosahedral symmetry

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to construct DNA duplex cage structures with icosahedral symmetry, enabling the design of nanotechnology containers using DNA with noncrystallographic symmetry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel construction approach for DNA cage structures with icosahedral symmetry, combining analytic and computational techniques.

Findings

Existence of realizations of the cage in terms of two circular DNA molecules.

Blueprints for DNA-based cage structures with noncrystallographic symmetry.

Potential applications in nanotechnology container design.

Abstract

A construction method for duplex cage structures with icosahedral sym- metry made out of single-stranded DNA molecules is presented and applied to an icosidodecahedral cage. It is shown via a mixture of analytic and computer techniques that there exist realisations of this graph in terms of two circular DNA molecules. These blueprints for the organisation of a cage structure with a noncrystallographic symmetry may assist in the design of containers made from DNA for applications in nanotechnology.