Basic Logical Operations Using Algorithmic Self-Assembly of DNA Molecules

Abstract

In recent years, DNA self-assembly is beginning to be seen as a practical vehicle for computation. A number of research groups have begun developing nanofabrication methods based on DNA self-assembly. Since the basic logical operations based on DNA molecules could be considered as the fundamental units of DNA computer architecture, how to achieve the basic logical operations based DNA self-assembly is explored in this paper. Original intention on tiling can be applied to the assembly and realization of circuits. These procedures can be realized on the molecular scale through the medium of self-assembled DNA tiles. One layer of self-assembled DNA tiles will be used as self-assembly the program or circuit that leads to the computation of a basic Boolean expression. For this purpose, a modified triple-crossover (TX) tiles which consist of two inputs and one output are used to execute molecular logical operations. The self-assembly of designed periodic one-dimensional arrays are composed of modified triple-crossover (TX) tiles, in which the intermolecular contacts are directed by sticky ends. Here, the paper makes a further to perform a one-dimensional algorithmic self-assembly of DNA triple-crossover molecules that can be used to execute five steps of a logical (cumulative AND and OR) operations on a string of binary bits.