Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2018
A major challenge in nanofabrication is the manipulation and exact placement of nano-objects on a specific template. Artificial DNA nanostructures such as DNA origami have garnered significant interest as templates for incorporating nanomaterials at precise sites while the structures are self-assembled. This work shows the usage of the DNA origami technique in the design and fabrication of nanostructures with the shapes of a circle and a triangle using the third part of the M13 virus genome, named mini-M13, as a scaffold. These DNA origami templates were modified to have DNA binding sites with a uniquely coded sequence. This method is used to attach 5 nm gold nanoparticles functionalized with the complementary DNA sequence. Two new metallic nanostructures with different nanoparticle arrays having minimum size but recognizable morphology are provided. The formation and dimensions of the nanostructures were verified using AFM and agarose gel electrophoresis.