Construction of a DNA-Truncated Octahedron

A covalently closed molecular complex whose double-helical edges have the connectivity of a truncated octahedron has been assembled from DNA on a solid support. This three-connected Archimedean solid contains six squares and eight hexagons, formed from 36 edges arranged about 24 vertices. The vertices are the branch points of four-arm DNA junctions, so each vertex has an extra exocyclic arm associated with it. The construct contains six single-stranded cyclic DNA molecules that form the squares and the extra arms; in addition, there are eight cyclic strands that correspond to the eight hexagons. The molecule contains 1440 nucleotides in the edges and 1110 in the extra arms; the estimated molecular weight for the 2550 nucleotides in the construct is 790 kDa