Intra- and Interbead Communications by an Anchored DNA Structure and Cascaded DNA Reactions

In nature, communication between compartments, such as cells and organelles, gives rise to biological complexity. Two types of chemical communication play important roles in achieving this complexity: intra- and intercompartment communication. Building a bioinspired synthetic system that can exhibit such communication is of interest for realizing microscale artificial robots with the complexity of actual cells. In this study, we aimed to demonstrate intra- and interbead communication using microbeads made of hydrogels as compartments. We employed the diffusion and reaction of programmed DNA molecules as a medium for chemical communication. As a result of the reaction-diffusion dynamics of DNA, the spatiotemporal development of fluorophore-labeled DNAs was observed under fluorescence microscopy, showing both intra- and interbead communication. Our simple, robust, and scalable methodology will accelerate the fabrication of synthetic microsystems that may have complex functionalities from various local interactions.