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Updated: Dec 27, 2025
DNA-Tethered RNA Polymerase for Programmable In vitro Transcription and Molecular Computation
Published on: December 29, 2021
Programming colloidal bonding using DNA strand-displacement circuitry
Xiang Zhou1, Dongbao Yao2, Wenqiang Hua3
1CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026 Hefei, Anhui, P. R. China.
Abstract:
As a strategy for regulating entropy, thermal annealing is a commonly adopted approach for controlling dynamic pathways in colloid assembly. By coupling DNA strand-displacement circuits with DNA-functionalized colloid assembly, we developed an enthalpy-mediated strategy for achieving the same goal while working at a constant temperature. Using this tractable approach allows colloidal bonding to be programmed for synchronization with colloid assembly, thereby realizing the optimal programmability of DNA-functionalized colloids. We applied this strategy to conditionally activate colloid assembly and dynamically switch colloid identities by reconfiguring DNA molecular architectures, thereby achieving orderly structural transformations; leveraging the advantage of room-temperature assembly, we used this method to prepare a lattice of temperature-sensitive proteins and gold nanoparticles. This approach bridges two subfields: dynamic DNA nanotechnology and DNA-functionalized colloid programming.
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