Figure 1.

Single‐step self‐assembly of XNA tetrahedra. A tetrahedron designed to form from four single‐stranded 55‐mer DNA oligonucleotides27 (strands A–D) containing regions of complementarity (corresponding colours) can be assembled from analogous strands composed of a variety of XNAs28 Tris⋅HCl buffer (10 mm, pH 8.0), containing NaCl (125 mm) and EDTA (1 mm). DNA was folded in Tris⋅HCl buffer (10 mm, pH 8.0), containing EDTA (1 mm) and MgCl₂ (10 mm). For all chemistries shown, absence of any one or more strands (lanes 1–6) caused a shift in mobility during agarose gel electrophoresis (2 %, 0.5× TBE) compared with all four components (lane 7).