A DNA Based Dissipation System that Synchronizes Multiple Fuels.

Artificial dissipative networks have emerged as advanced bionic systems for the development of material technology and synthetic biology. Here, we demonstrate a DNA-based artificial dissipation system that synchronizes multiple energy-rich molecules (fuels) including oligonucleotide, dNTP, and ATP. The autonomous operation of the dissipation system relies on the integration of DNA reaction network including polymerase extension, kinase phosphorylation, and exonuclease digestion. The use of multiple fuels provides multiple transient states with different energy levels and fine-tuning dissipative kinetics. The lifetime of the transient state can be programmed to increase or decrease just by varying one of the fuel molecules unlike conventional DNA-based dissipative systems where the increase in the concentration of fuel molecule increases the lifetime. This design greatly expands the toolkits for establishing dissipative/dynamic DNA networks. The dissipation system is harnessed to dynamically regulate the assembly of DNA nanotubes allowing for controlling the assembly kinetics via multiple fuels. Owing to the multiple transient states in the dissipation system, two nanotubes can be regulated in parallel. We envision that the system would find broad applications in responsive materials, soft robotics, biosensors, and on-demand drug delivery.