Facile and Scalable Preparation of Pure and Dense DNA Origami Solutions

Abstract

DNA has become a prime material for assembling complex three‐dimensional objects that promise utility in various areas of application. However, achieving user‐defined goals with DNA objects has been hampered by the difficulty to prepare them at arbitrary concentrations and in user‐defined solution conditions. Here, we describe a method that solves this problem. The method is based on poly(ethylene glycol)‐induced depletion of species with high molecular weight. We demonstrate that our method is applicable to a wide spectrum of DNA shapes and that it achieves excellent recovery yields of target objects up to 97 %, while providing efficient separation from non‐integrated DNA strands. DNA objects may be prepared at concentrations up to the limit of solubility, including the possibility for bringing DNA objects into a solid phase. Due to the fidelity and simplicity of our method we anticipate that it will help to catalyze the development of new types of applications that use self‐assembled DNA objects.