LNCS 2950 - Aspects of Molecular Computing (Frontmatter Pages)

76 Alessandra Carbone and Nadrian C. Seeman
among themselves into supramolecular periodic or aperiodic structures. What
other shapes do allow for the assembly of 1D, 2D and 3D arrays of such tile
complexes?
Besides spheres, tubes and networks, chemists work on the design of synthetic
molecules which lead to helical architectures of both molecular and supramolecular
nature by hierarchical self-organization, or again to the formation of mushroom-like
shapes and to a consequent assembly of such complexes into 3D arrays
[18] (these arrangements are not regular, in the sense that they are not crystals).
Mimicking nucleic-acid sequences, specific sequences of hydrogen bonding
residues are led to act as structure-inducing codons, and such structural coding
allows for the spontaneous but controlled generation of organized materials, e.g.
[18].
Fig. 11. A variety of two-dimensional arrays that have been formed from DNA
tiles. Panels (a) and (b) illustrate 2D arrays composed of DX and DX + J
molecules. Panel (c) illustrates patterns obtained from TX molecules. Panel (d)
illustrates an array made of DNA parallelograms.
At a different scale, for nanoscale molecules, like DNA, a broader range of
possibilities can be explored since all of the contacts can be forced to be of a
Watson-Crick form, although many other types of interaction are possible (e.g.,