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.