An enzyme-based approach for highly efficient self-replication of DNA origami dimers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zhang, Lei; Sha, Ruojie; Chaikin, Paul
• 署名单位: New York University; New York University
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-9179
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2500160122
• 发表日期: 2025-07-22
• 关键词: folding dna; INFORMATION; GROWTH

摘要

Self- replication and exponential growth are essential to all living things, the driving force for Darwinian evolution, and potentially useful in nanotechnology for large- scale production of nanoscopic materials. An artificial (nonliving) self- replication system has been shown to exhibit exponential growth and selection using DNA monomer origami tiles templated on a dimer seed. That system purposefully avoided the use of enzymes to get a hint of how self- replication might have evolved in a prebiotic world by using CNVK and UV light to crosslink complementary DNA single strands. For further investigations into competition and extinction and for potential applications involving biocompatibility, we wanted to investigate enzymatic ligation to replace the chemical photo crosslinking step. Here, we present a system which uses thermotolerant T4 DNA ligase and no UV. This system has several additional advantages including a much faster cycling time, yielding 2,000,000 amplifications in 12 h. We also introduce competition to study pete for the same connection strands and show different growth rates under different connection strand concentrations. This system has the potential to combine evolution in nature but also opens the door to applications ranging from synthetic biology to smart materials.