%0 Journal Article
%A Salamonczyk, Miroslaw
%A Zhang, Jing
%A Portale, Giuseppe
%A Zhu, Chenhui
%A Kentzinger, Emmanuel
%A Gleeson, James T.
%A Jakli, Antal
%A De Michele, Cristiano
%A Dhont, Jan K. G.
%A Sprunt, Samuel
%A Stiakakis, Emmanuel
%T Smectic phase in suspensions of gapped DNA duplexes
%J Nature Communications
%V 7
%@ 2041-1723
%C London
%I Nature Publishing Group
%M FZJ-2016-06442
%P 13358 -
%D 2016
%X Smectic ordering in aqueous solutions of monodisperse stiff double-stranded DNA fragments is known not to occur, despite the fact that these systems exhibit both chiral nematic and columnar mesophases. Here, we show, unambiguously, that a smectic-A type of phase is formed by increasing the DNA’s flexibility through the introduction of an unpaired single-stranded DNA spacer in the middle of each duplex. This is unusual for a lyotropic system, where flexibility typically destabilizes the smectic phase. We also report on simulations suggesting that the gapped duplexes (resembling chain-sticks) attain a folded conformation in the smectic layers, and argue that this layer structure, which we designate as smectic-fA phase, is thermodynamically stabilized by both entropic and energetic contributions to the system’s free energy. Our results demonstrate that DNA as a building block offers an exquisitely tunable means to engineer a potentially rich assortment of lyotropic liquid crystals.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%U <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000387971800001
%$ pmid:27845332
%R 10.1038/ncomms13358
%U https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/821204