Programmable metal assembly on bio-inspired templates

Besides the biological importance of DNA as genetic information storage and expression, DNA has great potential to act as a smart molecule for programmable self-assembly of functional units since it is possible to encode molecular assembled systems using sequences of nucleobases in a designable fashion. Recently, we have reported a novel base-pairing motif in DNA duplex that is based on the replacement of hydrogen-bonded base pairs by metal-mediated base pairs. This review covers our recent approaches to precise programming of metal arrays by means of artificial DNA templates.