Smectic phase in suspensions of gapped DNA duplexes

Miroslaw Salamonczyk, Jing Zhang, Giuseppe Portale, Chenhui Zhu, Emmanuel Kentzinger, James T. Gleeson, Antal Jakli, Cristiano De Michele (), Jan K. G. Dhont, Samuel Sprunt and Emmanuel Stiakakis ()
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Miroslaw Salamonczyk: Kent State University
Jing Zhang: Institute of Complex Systems ICS-3, JARA-SOFT, Forschungszentrum Jülich
Giuseppe Portale: Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen
Chenhui Zhu: Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Emmanuel Kentzinger: Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS and Peter Grünberg Institut PGI, JARA-FIT, Forschungszentrum Jülich
James T. Gleeson: Kent State University
Antal Jakli: Kent State University
Cristiano De Michele: Sapienza Università di Roma
Jan K. G. Dhont: Institute of Complex Systems ICS-3, JARA-SOFT, Forschungszentrum Jülich
Samuel Sprunt: Kent State University
Emmanuel Stiakakis: Institute of Complex Systems ICS-3, JARA-SOFT, Forschungszentrum Jülich

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13358

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