Difference between revisions of "Team:Hong Kong HKU"

The field of DNA nanotechnology has proved to be one of the fastest growing fields in synthetic biology. Recent advances have focused on the development of DNA origami, tweezer structures and various other two and three dimensional structures, with the aim of applying such structures into areas such as diagnostics, drug delivery, detection and more.

Hypothesis:
Through our project, we expect to follow in the footsteps of such advancements, however taking them a step further to develop a three dimensional DNA nanostructure that can undergo an induced structural change in the presence of its specific nucleic acid targets (RNA or DNA) not solely in vitro but also in living cells after expression.

Objectives:
Our objectives would be to first prove the efficiency and accuracy of our structure in detecting its respective target in vitro with the application of various laboratory techniques, for example gel electrophoresis and colorimetric assays, followed by the expression of our DNA nanostructure in organisms, namely E.coli, after which the structure can be extracted and tested as well again.
In brief, we will aim to construct a three dimensional DNA nanostructure that can be used for the detection of nucleic acid markers and explore its functionality, both in vitro and in living cells.