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It is known that DNA molecules can be used to build a various of complicated geometrical DNA nanostructures with programmable sequence design, and these DNA nanomaterials show a promising application in biotechnology and biomedicine. However, the construction of large-sized three dimensional DNA-based nanomaterials still remains a challenge. In this work, we propose a new strategy that only employs one target DNA to trigger multiple catalyzed hairpin assembly (CHA) reactions and sticky ends self-assembly to prepare hundreds of nanometer-sized DNA nanoparticles. Moreover, the obtained DNA nanoparticles can be served as efficient biosensors for sensitive colorimetric nucleic acids detection with a detection limit of 7.7pM., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Self-assembly of DNA nanostructures is of great importance in nanomedicine, nanotechnology and biosensing. Herein, a novel target-catalyzed autonomous assembly pathway for the formation of dendrimer-like DNA nanostructures that only employing target DNA and three hairpin DNA probes was proposed. We use the sticky-ended Y shape DNA (Y-DNA) as the assembly monomer and it was synthesized by the catalyzed hairpin assembly (CHA) instead of the DNA strand annealing method. The formed Y-DNA was equipped with three ssDNA sticky ends and two of them were predesigned to be complementary to the third one, then the dendrimer-like DNA nanostructures can be obtained via an autonomous assembly among these sticky-ended Y-DNAs. The resulting nanostructure has been successfully applied to develop an enzyme-free and signal amplified gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-based colorimetric nucleic acids assay., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

It is known that the adsorption of short single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) on unmodified gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) is much faster than that for long ssDNA, and thus leads to length-dependent AuNPs aggregation after addition of salt, the color of the solutions sequentially changed from red to blue in accordance with the increase of ssDNA length. However, we found herein that the ssDNA sticky end of hairpin DNA exhibited a completely different adsorption behavior compared to ssDNA, an inverse blue-to-red color variation was observed in the colloid solution with the increase of sticky end length when the length is within a certain range. This unusual sequence length-dependent AuNPs aggregation might be ascribed to the effect of the stem of hairpin DNA. On the basis of this unique phenomenon and catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) based signal amplification, a novel AuNPs-based colorimetric DNA assay with picomolar sensitivity and specificity was developed. This unusual sequence length-dependent AuNPs aggregation of the ssDNA sticky end introduces a new direction for the AuNPs-based colorimetric assays.