2025/06/25 by Jakub Ossowski, Cyril Antheaume, Jean‐François Lutz +1 · 1 voice
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · #Advanced biosensing and bioanalysis techniques #DNA and Biological Computing #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/adfm.202511868
openalex publication_date 2025/06/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract Two toehold‐mediated strand displacement mechanisms—parallel (PTMSD) and series (STMSD)—are explored as strategies for editing digital information stored in synthetic bio‐hybrid polymers. To demonstrate their potential, uniform DNA–poly(phosphodiester) (PPDE) conjugates are synthesized using automated phosphoramidite chemistry and characterized by HPLC and mass spectrometry. In these macromolecules, binary information is encoded exclusively in the synthetic polymer segment, while the DNA single strands (ssDNA) serve as programmable motifs for orthogonal self‐assembly. DNA sequences are optimized using nucleic acid design software, and the synthetic domains are encoded with a previously reported binary alphabet. These bio‐hybrid precursors are then assembled into linear supramolecular architectures via DNA‐directed self‐assembly. The resulting structures incorporated both digitally encoded polymer segments and double‐stranded DNA connectors, as well as accessible ssDNA toeholds that enabled PTMSD and STMSD. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) is used to monitor the strand displacement reactions, confirming that PTMSD enables the selective release or erasure of encoded information through dual‐toehold accessibility. Furthermore, STMSD is shown to facilitate stepwise rewriting of information. As a proof‐of‐concept, an English word encoded in the system is successfully edited into its French translation.