Construction of DNA Circuits Based on Cooperative Hairpin DNA Strand Displacement

As substances carrying genetic information, the properties of DNA molecules, such as natural programmability and the ability of information storage, provide a brand-new implementation method for constructing biocompatible logic circuits at the nanoscale. This paper proposes a cooperative hairpin DNA strand displacement mechanism, and based on this mechanism, two primitive DNA logic gates including OR gate and INHIBIT gate are constructed. In addition, an OR-INHIBIT DNA circuit are realized by juxtaposing these basic DNA logic gates in an isomorphic way. The transformation of the functions of basic logic gates and logic circuits is achieved by changing the auxiliary signal strands and input strands, which greatly reduces the complexity of DNA circuits. This construction method can enrich the toolbox for DNA circuit construction and contribute to the development of fields such as biosensors and biocomputing.