1 Branched kissing loops for the construction of diverse RNA homooligomeric 2 nanostructures 3 Di Liu1, Cody W. Geary2,3, Gang Chen1, Yaming Shao4, Mo Li5, Chengde Mao5, Ebbe S. Andersen2, Joseph A. Piccirilli1,4, 4 Paul W. K. Rothemund3, Yossi Weizmann1,* 5 1Department of Chemistry, the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA 6 2Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center and Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark 7 3Bioengineering, Computational + Mathematical Sciences, and Computation & Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, 8 Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 9 4Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA 10 5Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA 11 *Correspondence to:
[email protected] (Y. W.) 12 13 Summary figure 14 15 16 17 This study presents a robust homooligomeric self-assembly system based on RNA and DNA tiles that are 18 folded from a single-strand of nucleic acid and assemble via a novel artificially designed branched 19 kissing-loops (bKL) motif. By adjusting the geometry of individual tiles, we have constructed a total of 16 20 different structures that demonstrate our control over the curvature, torsion, and number of helices of 21 assembled structures. Furthermore, bKL-based tiles can be assembled cotranscriptionally, and can be 22 expressed in living bacterial cells. 23 24 Branched kissing loops for the construction of diverse RNA homooligomeric 25 nanostructures