Flexible regulation of DNA displacement reaction through nucleic acid-recognition enzyme and its application in keypad lock system and biosensing

Toehold-mediated DNA strand displacement reaction (SDR) plays pivotal roles for the construction of diverse dynamic DNA nanodevices. To date, many elements have been introduced into SDR system to achieve controllable activation and fine regulation. However, as the most relevant stimuli for nucleic acid involved reaction, nucleic acid-recognizing enzymes (NAEs) have received nearly no attention so far despite SDR often takes place in NAEs-enriched environment (i.e., biological fluids). Herein, we report a set of NAEs-controlled SDR strategies, which take full advantage of NAEs’ properties. In this study, three different kinds of enzymes belonging to several classes (i.e., exonuclease, endonuclease and polymerase) have been used to activate or inhibit SDR, and more importantly, some mechanisms behind these strategies on how NAEs affect SDR have also been revealed. The exploration to use NAEs as possible cues to operate SDR will expand the available toolbox to build novel stimuli-fueled DNA nanodevices and could open the door to many applications including enzyme-triggered biocomputing and biosensing.