Tissue specific targeting of DNA nanodevices in a multicellular living organism
Abstract
Nucleic acid nanodevices present great potential as agents for logic-based therapeutic intervention as well as in basic biology. Often, however, the disease targets that need corrective action are localized in specific organs and thus realizing the full potential of DNA nanodevices also requires ways to target them to specific cell-types in vivo. Here we show that by exploiting either endogenous or synthetic receptor-ligand interactions and by leveraging the biological barriers presented by the organism, we can target extraneously introduced DNA nanodevices to specific cell types in C. elegans, with sub-cellular precision. The amenability of DNA nanostructures to tissue-specific targeting in vivo significantly expands their utility in biomedical applications and discovery biology.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-19-0003)
- Yamuna Krishnan
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (1R01NS112139-01A1)
- Yamuna Krishnan
Ono Pharma Foundation
- Yamuna Krishnan
Whitehall Foundation
- Paschalis Kratsios
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Kang Shen, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, United States
Publication history
- Received: February 24, 2021
- Preprint posted: March 6, 2021 (view preprint)
- Accepted: July 26, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: July 28, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: August 12, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2021, Chakraborty et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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