Your budget will be an influential consideration when designing your DNA nanostructure. The cost of synthesizing your origami correlates with the number of unique DNA strands you intend to order. For a scaffolded origami using the typical M13mp18 DNA scaffold, usually 200–250 oligos are required. For large assemblies using DNA bricks or crisscross slats this number increases to the range of 10,000 and 2,000 respectively12. Fractal assembly is a promising alternative to scaling up DNA nanostructure size without the price scaling linearly3. Fractal assembly is a hierarchical multi-stage assembly process where self-similar nanostructures are joined together into increasingly larger arrays at each stage. Self-similarity allows the design of larger structures with a single pool of DNA staples.
Another large budgetary consideration is whether you need modified oligos for your nanostructure. Modifications include biotin, fluorophores, alkyne groups, etc. Modifications often increase the price of oligos from 2× to greater than 50× what the unmodified equivalent would cost.
References
- Ke, Y., Ong, L. L., Shih, W. M. & Yin, P. Three-Dimensional Structures Self-Assembled from DNA Bricks. Science 338, 1177–1183 (2012).
- Wintersinger, C. M. et al. Multi-micron crisscross structures grown from DNA-origami slats. Nat. Nanotechnol. 18, 281–289 (2023).
- Tikhomirov, G., Petersen, P. & Qian, L. Fractal assembly of micrometre-scale DNA origami arrays with arbitrary patterns. Nature 552, 67–71 (2017).