Development and Sensing Application of Nucleic Acid Dissipative Networks

Yu Ouyang, Institute of Chemistry, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel (yu.ouyang@mail.huji.ac.il)

Nucleic acid-based, out-of-equilibrium, dissipative networks^[1]driven by nucleic acid fuels coupled to the nicking enzyme, Nt.BbvCI, are presented. One set of experiments includes a functional module consisting of a duplex and two fluorophore-labeled strands. The fuel-triggered activation of the functional module leads to a supramolecular intermediate composed of a template bound to the two fluorophore-labeled strands. Nicking of the fuel strand by Nt.BbvCI yields “waste” products, resulting in the regeneration of original system. The transient dissipative behavior of the systems is probed by following the Förster resonance energy transfer, FRET, signal generated by the fluorophore labels associated with the intermediate supramolecular complex. Such a dissipative system further was developed to the gated- or cascaded-dissipative system by two parallel separated dissipative modules or cascade relation of module I induced module II. In addition, operation of optical properties of nanoparticles^[2]and biocatalytic enzyme cascades^[3], driven by nucleic acid dissipative network is addressed. Moreover, engineering structural design of triggers that coupling with metal ions, ligands, genes, and proteins, leads to expand potential transient sensing recyclable platform for multiple analytes in the coming future.

References

[1]          Z. Zhou, Y. Ouyang, J. Wang, I. Willner, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 5071-5079.
[2]          Y. Ouyang, P. Zhang, H. Manis-Levy, Y. Paltiel, I. Willner, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 17622-17632.
[3]          Y. Ouyang, P. Zhang, I. Willner, Sci. Adv. 2022, 8, eabn3534.

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Short Biography of Presenting Author

Yu Ouyang received his PhD degree from the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China, working under the supervision of Prof. Qingli Hao on the assembly of nanomaterials. From 2018-2019, he was a visiting PhD researcher in Institute of Chemistry at Hebrew University under supervision of Prof. Daniel Mandler. Dr Ouyang currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship from the Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC) of the Council, Israel, and works in the laboratory of Prof. Itamar Willner at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where his research focuses on nucleic acid networks and its application.