A Case Study of the Likes and Dislikes of DNA and RNA in Self-Assembly

Programmed self-assembly of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) is an active research area as it promises a general approach for nanoconstruction. Whereas DNA self-assembly has been extensively studied, RNA self-assembly lags much behind. One strategy to boost RNA self-assembly is to adapt the methods of DNA self-assembly for RNA self-assembly because of the chemical and structural similarities of DNA and RNA. However, these two types of molecules are still significantly different. To enable the rational design of RNA self-assembly, a thorough examination of their likes and dislikes in programmed self-assembly is needed. The current work begins to address this task. It was found that similar, two-stranded motifs of RNA and DNA lead to similar, but clearly different nanostructures.