Recent advances in molecular machines based on toehold-mediated strand displacement reaction

Abstract

Background: The DNA strand displacement reaction, which uses flexible and programmable DNA molecules as reaction components, is the basis of dynamic DNA nanotechnology, and has been widely used in the design of complex autonomous behaviors.

Results: In this review, we first briefly introduce the concept of toehold-mediated strand displacement reaction and its kinetics regulation in pure solution. Thereafter, we review the recent progresses in DNA complex circuit, the assembly of AuNPs driven by DNA molecular machines, and the detection of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) using DNA toehold exchange probes in pure solution and in interface state. Lastly, the applications of toehold-mediated strand displacement in the genetic regulation and silencing through combining gene circuit with RNA interference systems are reviewed.

Conclusions: The toehold-mediated strand displacement reaction makes DNA an excellent material for the fabrication of molecular machines and complex circuit, and may potentially be used in the disease diagnosis and the regulation of gene silencing in the near future.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

toehold-mediated strand displacement / DNA molecular machines / SNP / gene expression regulation

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 91427304, 21434007, 21574122, 51573175, and 21404098), the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2012CB821500), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WK3450000002 and WK2060200017) for their financial support.

COMPLIANCE WITH ETHICS GUIDELINES

The authors Yijun Guo, Bing Wei, Shiyan Xiao, Dongbao Yao, Hui Li, Huaguo Xu, Tingjie Song, Xiang Li and Haojun Liang declare no competing financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work. There is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript titled “Recent Advances in Molecular Machines Based on Toehold-mediated Strand Displacement Reaction”.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Funding

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2017 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg