Cascaded DNA circuits-programmed self-assembly of spherical nucleic acids for high signal amplification

Abstract

Signal amplification is an important issue in DNA nanotechnology and molecular diagnostics. In this work, we report a strategy for the catalytic self-assembly of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) programmed by two-layer cascaded DNA circuits through integrating an entropy-driven catalytic network, a catalytic hairpin assembly circuit, and a facile SNA assembly-based reporter system. This integrated system could implement ~100,000-fold signal amplification in the presence of 1 pM of input target. Possessing powerful amplification ability of nucleic acid signal, our strategy should be of great potential in fabricating more robust dynamic networks to be applied for signal transduction, DNA computing, and nucleic acid-based diagnostics.