The Chemistry And Mathematics Of DNA Polyhedra

Polyhedra are one of the most common architectures that natural materials exhibit, such as viral capsids for example. Chemists, in the past few centuries, have continuously been making efforts on synthesizing these beautiful structures in laboratory. Although a lot of achievements have been arrived, it is still a great challenge to construct polyhedral structures by chemical approaches. However, since 1990s, a series of molecular polyhedra, from DNA cube to DNA buckyball, have been surprisingly built with the magic material DNA. The successful syntheses of these DNA polyhedra have provided us an effective approach towards mimicking natural polyhedral molecules, and provoked the mathematical explorations on the theory of novel forms of polyhedra. It is hoped that association between the chemical and mathematical endeavors will eventually promote our understanding of new forms of DNA and protein molecules.