Abstract
A molecular robot is an intelligent molecular system. A typical control problem of molecular robots is to maintain the concentration of a specific DNA strand at the desired level, which is typically attained by a molecular feedback control mechanism. A molecular feedback system can be constructed in a bottom-up method by transforming a nonlinear chemical reaction system into a pseudo-linear system. This method enables the implementation of a molecular proportional-integral (PI) controller on a DNA reaction system. However, a DNA reaction system is driven by fuel DNA strand consumption, and without a sufficient amount of fuel strands, the molecular PI controller cannot perform normal operations as a concentration regulator. In this study, we developed a design method for a molecular PI control system to regenerate fuel strands by introducing photoresponsive reaction control. To this end, we employed a photoresponsive molecule, azobenzene, to guide the reaction direction forward or backward using light irradiation. We validated our renewable design of the PI controller by numerical simulations based on the reaction kinetics. We also confirmed the proof-of-principle of our renewable design by conducting experiments using a basic DNA circuit.
Highlights
Introduction and Yusuke SatoIn recent years, remarkable progress has been made in molecular computing, which has emerged as a fusion field between computer science, chemistry, and biology
The design of information processing through chemical reactions of biomolecules is a major part of molecular computing; in particular, dynamic DNA nanotechnology, which designs a variety of logical and operational circuits in DNA reaction systems, has been in the spotlight [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
The controller design problem of molecular robots is to maintain the concentration of a specific DNA strand at the desired level, which is called a regulator design problem in control engineering [11]
Summary
Introduction and Yusuke SatoIn recent years, remarkable progress has been made in molecular computing, which has emerged as a fusion field between computer science, chemistry, and biology. The design of information processing through chemical reactions of biomolecules is a major part of molecular computing; in particular, dynamic DNA nanotechnology, which designs a variety of logical and operational circuits in DNA reaction systems, has been in the spotlight [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. These previous studies demonstrated that it is possible to make various molecular machines intelligent by using functional circuits implemented in molecular reaction systems. The controller design problem of molecular robots is to maintain the concentration of a specific DNA strand at the desired level, which is called a regulator design problem in control engineering [11]
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