Scientists have designed and synthesized chains of
molecules with a precise sequence and length to efficiently protect
3-D DNA nanostructures from structural degradation under a variety
of biomedically relevant conditions. They demonstrated how these
“peptoid-coated DNA origami” have the potential to be used for
delivering anti-cancer drugs and proteins, imaging biological
molecules, and targeting cell-surface receptors implicated in
cancer. Their method for designing peptoids to stabilize DNA
origami in physiological environments is described in a paper
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
the week of Mar. 9.
