Polymorphic G-quadruplexes including stacked G-quartet planes are potentially promising DNA templates beyond Watson-Crick duplexes to construct inorganic nanostructures. In this work, a novel G-rich oligonucleotide that can be modulated from the antiparallel G-quadruplex to multi-stranded supermolecular assemblies was designed. Based on this dynamic G-quadruplex transformation, an interesting leaf-vein silica nanostructure with regular branched intervals was constructed. The G-quadruplex assembly structure was found to play a significant role in the organization of the silica structures. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.