Nucleic acids for the rational design of reaction circuits

Nucleic acid-based circuits are rationally designed in vitro assemblies that can perform complex preencoded programs. They can be used to mimic in silico computations. Recent works emphasized the modularity and robustness of these circuits, which allow their scaling-up. Another new development has led to dynamic, time-responsive systems that can display emergent behaviors like oscillations. These are closely related to biological architectures and provide an in vitro model of in vivo information processing. Nucleic acid circuits have already been used to handle various processes for technological or biotechnological purposes. Future applications of these chemical smart systems will benefit from the rapidly growing ability to design, construct, and model nucleic acid circuits of increasing size.

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► Nucleic acids can be used to build reaction modules modeled after in vivo or in silico computers.
► In vitro circuits built from these modules perform one-shot calculations or show complex dynamics.
► Applications at the interface with biology, or for molecular-scale robotics, are burgeoning.