Editorial: Construction and biological applications of programmable DNA dynamic reactions.

Abstract

Since the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick, the programmability of DNA molecules and the predictability of DNA hybridization have garnered widespread attention. Benefiting from DNA solid-phase synthesis technology, desired DNA sequences can be conveniently synthesized, and functional molecules can be easily conjugated onto DNA strands with declining costs, which drives the rapid development of DNA nanotechnology, including DNA dynamic reactions and DNA nanostructures. Additionally, the development of functional nucleic acids, such as aptamers (Bell et al., 2020) and DNAzymes (Ren et al., 2020), has allowed for the integration of DNA dynamic reactions in biological processes through molecular recognition-based conversion of biological signals into DNA signals. These advancements have led to the widespread use of DNA dynamic reactions in biosensing, bioregulation, and selective drug release in biological environments by responding to biological targets such as small molecules, nucleic acids, proteins, and cells (Gao et