Material construction and performance testing. (a) Structure of the 10–23 synthetic DNAzyme (shaded in green color). A conserved 15-base unpaired motif serves as the catalytic core and is flanked by variable binding domains at its 50- and 30-ends. The point of scission within target RNA is indicated by a red color arrow; (b) multifunctional nanoparticle formulation for DNAzyme delivery. (Dz, DNAzyme; MPAP, myristoylated polyarginine peptide; Cy5.5, fluorescent dye; CPP, cell-penetrating peptide); (c) Western blot analysis of HCV NS3 expression in cultured Huh-7 Luc-Neo cells treated with Dz-conjugated multifunctional nanoparticles; (d) densitometric analysis of the data shown in (c). Density values for NS3 were normalized to the β-actin band density; (e) luciferase (reporter gene) assays of Huh-7 Luc-Neo cells treated with Dz-MPAP-MN indicate dose-dependent downregulation of the NS3 target gene. (Reproduced with permission from Ref. [51], Copyright 2012, Elsevier).