Northwestern investigators have demonstrated how manipulating DNA chemistry can alter its structure and flexibility and enable the realization of new materials useful in medicine and the life sciences, according to a study published in Science Advances and led by Chad Mirkin, PhD, professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology.

“This study serves as a proof-of-principle to demonstrate how the researcher can strategically design and prepare DNA systems whose structures can be toggled to realize architectures with different shapes, flexibilities and reactivities” said Zhenyu (Henry) Han, a graduate student in the Mirkin laboratory and lead author of the study… Continue reading.