Asymmetric PCR (aPCR) is often used to generate single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) scaffolds, which can then be assembled into nanoobjects by the DNA-origami technique. The scaffolds are usually purified by agarose gel extraction, a laborious, time consuming, limited, and non-scalable technique that presents low recovery yields, delivers low-quality products. To overcome such pitfalls, Ana Silva-Santos, Rui Silva, Sara Rosa and Miguel Prazeres from BERG-iBB, in collaboration with Pedro Paulo from CQE developed a simple, fast, and potentially scalable affinity-based method comprising magnetic particles. Specifically, scaffolds were synthesized by aPCR and purifed using magnetic particles functionalized with a 20 nt oligonucleotide complementary to the 3′ end of the target. The purified scaffolds were used to assemble 31 and 63 bp edge length tetrahedra with short oligonucleotides and thermal annealing, demonstrating the potential of affinity-based magnetic beads in the production of DNA-origami nanostructures. The work was published in ACS Applied Nanomaterials.
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