Recently, the team led by Liu Zhenbao from Xiangya School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, CSU, published a review titled “Dynamic DNA Assemblies in Biomedical Applications” in the top international journal, Advanced Science (2020, https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202000557). The first author of this review is Hu Yaqin, a CSU postgraduate student of the class of 2018, and Associate Professor Liu Zhenbao from Xiangya School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Associate Professor Liu Yanfei from School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering serve as joint corresponding authors.
Since the concept of DNA nanostructures was first proposed, DNA nanostructures have stayed in the forefront of nanotechnology. In recent years, there has been rapid development in that field: various DNA nanostructures have sprung up like mushrooms, with strong application prospects in biosensing, detection, imaging, drug delivery and other biomedical fields. Among them, dynamic DNA nanostructure is recognized as intelligent for its specific response to certain stimuli. This review first summarizes the assembly principles and relevant auxiliary design software of different types of DNA nanostructures and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of such software. Then, it elaborates on the response principles of various dynamic DNA nanostructures, explains their response mechanisms from both exogenous and endogenous stimuli, and enumerates the latest applications in biomedicine. In addition, this review comprehensively summarizes several types of dynamic DNA nanostructures with special dynamic behaviors and applications, like the DNA walker, the DNA nanochannel, and the DNA hydrogel. With the deep analysis in the challenges and prospects of developing intelligent dynamic DNA nanostructures, this review also provides a reference for the construction of more dynamic DNA nanostructures that will have excellent performance. Predictably, dynamic DNA nanostructures will provide new opportunities for interdisciplinary basic research and biomedical applications.
This team has long been engaged in the researches on drug delivery systems and molecular diagnostics based on functional nucleic acids and nanomaterials. It has achieved a number of important research results in recent years, many of which have been published in the periodicals like Biomaterials (IF: 10.273) and Journal of Materials Chemistry B in 2020.
This research was supported by the Huxiang Young Talent Program, the Innovation-Driven Plan of Central South University, the Sublimation Yuying Program of Central South University, the General Program of Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation, etc.
Source: School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
