Rheology and Programmable Gelation of DNA Origami Polymer Tadpoles

TL;DR

This study designs DNA origami-inspired polymers with various topologies to investigate their rheological and viscoelastic properties, revealing universal scaling and topology-dependent thermoresponsive behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a method to create and analyze complex DNA origami-like polymers with distinct topologies and explores their unique rheological properties and potential for thermoresponsive applications.

Findings

All constructs obeyed universal rheological scalings.

Thermal annealing caused topology-dependent behaviors.

DNA origami-like polymers can engineer thermoresponsive complex fluids.

Abstract

DNA origami is a powerful method to achieve nanoscale folded structures. Despite rapid improvements in folding and purification methods, DNA origami objects are still often produced in small quantities and studied at single molecule scale. Here, we design simple DNA origami-inspired polymers with complex topologies, and study their rheology and viscoelastic properties in dense conditions. First, we designed and purified topologically distinct DNA nanostructures, linear, circular, and "tadpole" polymers, to evaluate how polymer architecture influences entanglement and rheology. Despite their distinct topologies, we observe that all constructs obeyed universal rheological scalings, likely due to their short length. However, upon thermal annealing in the bulk, the DNA origami-like polymers displayed significantly different behaviours. Our results suggest that DNA origami-like polymers could be used to engineer thermoresponsive behaviours in complex fluids by introducing reversible and topology-dependent crosslinking.