Dissertation Defense: Design Modeling and Analysis of Compliant and Rigid-Body DNA Origami Mechanisms

Committee Members

• Professor Haijun Su, Chair
• Professor Carlos Castro
• Professor Jonathon Song
• Professor Hanna Cho

Abstract

Scaffolded DNA origami is a recently emerging technology that allows the construction of complex nanostructures via molecular self-assembly driven by Watson and Crick base-pairing, i.e. A-T, C-G. In the past decade, this approach has been successfully used to construct complex 2D or 3D static structures. Complex dynamic DNA origami mechanisms (DOM) have been fabricated and can achieve 1D, 2D and 3D motions. This research expanded scaffolded DNA origami nanotechnology to design dynamic nanomechanisms by following a design framework that parallels macroscopic compliant mechanism design. These compliant DNA origami mechanisms were referred as CDOM. The compliant components can be built by ssDNA connections or double-strand (dsDNA) bundles with small bending stiffness, which can be easily realized within DNA origami.