UC San Diego

Increasing attention has been paid into RNA as a building block to make nanostructures in the past two decades. The goal of this study was to make a nanoprism which was fully made of double-stranded RNA by an efficient self-assembly method. This was done by extending a nanotriangle which was rationally designed and made from an RNA conformational switch in the internal ribosome entry site (IRES) of Seneca Valley virus (SVV) and then combining two extended triangles with DNA or RNA splints. The successful extension and combination of triangles were investigated by native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). Details of the structure were further analyzed by Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) methods, fluorescence quenching methods, and atomic force microscopy (AFM).