DNA nanotechnology as a tool to manipulate lipid bilayer membranes

Great efforts have been dedicated to use DNA as a building block in nanotechnology because of its versatile properties, such as high specificity and programmability to form complex structures. In this thesis, we have established a new strategy for anchoring oligonucleotides in vesicle membranes enabled by attaching hydrophobic units to the nucleobase and shown that chemical synthesis is a valuable tool to produce functional DNA molecules to increase the complexity of membrane engineering approaches. After demonstrating the stability of lipid-DNA in the vesicle membranes, lipid-DNA induced vesicle fusion was studied. It was found that the orientation of DNA hybridization and the number of anchoring units played a crucial role in vesicle fusion. To further extend the functionality of DNA-based vesicles, we explored the hybridization and dynamic exchange of DNA on the surface of liposomes by simple addition of DNA sequences. Moreover, a DNA based amplification process was performed on the surface of liposomes with a DNA probe. Finally, we successfully demonstrated the performance of a DNA mediated amplification process on the zebrafish skin. Due to the broad application of zebrafish as animal model in drug development, toxicology and nanoparticles characterization in living systems, we believe the platform presented here allows amalgamation of DNA nanotechnology tools with live animals and enables efficient bio-barcoding as well as in vivo tracking.