Meta-DNA Strand Displacement for Sub-Micron-Scale Autonomous Reconfiguration
Meiyuan Qi, Wenhe Ma, Qin Xu, Fei Wang, Ping Song, Sisi Jia, Xiaolei Zuo, Mingqiang Li, Guangbao Yao, Chunhai Fan
Abstract
Dynamic molecular interactions in chemical reaction networks lead to complex behaviors in living systems. Whereas recent advances in programming DNA molecular reactions have reached a high level of complexity at molecular and nanometer scales, achieving programmable autonomous behavior at submicron or even larger scales remains challenging. Here, we present a mechanism of meta-DNA strand displacement reactions (M-SDRs) that is mediated solely by meta-toehold (M-toehold) using versatile submicron building blocks of meta-DNA (M-DNA). M-SDR emulates the toehold binding and branch migration processes of conventional strand displacement. Importantly, the kinetics of M-SDR can be modulated over a range of five orders of magnitude reaching a maximum rate of about 1.62 × 10 5 M –1 s –1 . Further, we demonstrate the use of M-SDR to program autonomous reconfiguration in information transmission and logical computation systems. We envision that M-SDR serves as a versatile mechanism for emulating autonomous behavior approaching the cellular level.