(217ar) Dynamic Covalent Assembly of Information-Bearing Oligomers

Nucleic acids, macromolecules that serve as the ubiquitous information-bearing species throughout biology, present the most versatile, state of the art class of materials for producing diverse, specific nanostructures to date owing to their information-directed self-assembly. Through careful consideration of their nucleobase sequence, nucleic acids can be designed to predictably self-assemble via the hybridization of complementary strands into arbitrary structures. Unfortunately, the versatility of nucleic acid assemblies is tempered by their fragility and susceptibility to thermal and mechanical degradation, attributable to the weak hydrogen bonds holding the strands together. In contrast, covalent bonds exhibit bond energies over an order of magnitude higher than those for hydrogen bonds, providing a route for the fabrication of far more mechanically robust assemblies. We describe the development of sequence-specific oligomers that employ dynamic covalent interactions to effect hybridization between strands of complementary sequences, mimicking the self-assembly commonly observed in complementary nucleic acid strands.