Nanowerk August 14, 2023
Many scientists believe that the key to designing and programming more complex and useful artificial nanosystems relies on our ability to understand and better employ molecular languages developed by living organisms, namely allostery (molecule binds and modifies the structure of another molecule) and multivalency, (facilitates (or not) the binding of a third molecule by simply increasing its binding interface). As a proof-of-concept researchers in Canada engineered a highly programmable DNA-based switch that could be triggered by either a multivalent or an allosteric DNA activator. By precisely designing the binding interface of the multivalent activator, they showed that the affinity, dynamic range, and activated half-life of the molecular switch could be programed with even more versatility than when using an allosteric activator. The simplicity by which the activation properties of molecular switches could be tuned using multivalent assembly suggests that it may find many applications in biosensing, drug delivery, synthetic biology, and molecular computation fields, where precise control over the transduction of binding events into a specific output is key… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Abstract. Credit: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXX, August 15, 2023Â