Biotechnological Frontiers of DNA Nanomaterials Continue to Expand: Bacterial Infection using Virus‐Inspired Capsids

The elegant geometry of viruses has inspired bio‐engineers to synthetically explore the self‐assembly of polyhedral capsids employed to protect new cargo or change an enzymatic microenvironment. Recently, Yang and co‐workers used DNA nanotechnology to revisit the icosahedral capsid structure of the phiX174 bacteriophage and reloaded the original viral genome as cargo into their fully synthetic architecture. Surprisingly, when using a favorable combination of structural rigidity and dynamic multivalent cargo entrapment, the synthetic particles were able to infect non‐competent bacterial cells and produce the original phiX174 bacteriophage. This work presents an exciting new direction of DNA nanotech for bio‐engineering applications which involve bacterial interactions. Through the engineering of virus‐inspired DNA‐origami particles loaded with natural bacteriophage genomic cargo, scientists measured a retained functional infection in non‐competent bacterial cells. Critical parameters for infectivity include structural rigidity and complete yet dynamic loading of the cargo through multivalent optimization of anchors.