Transient Out-of-Equilibrium Nucleic Acid-Based Dissipative Networks and Their Applications

Dynamic, dissipative reactions play important roles in biological processes, and emulating such biological processes by artificial circuits and networks is a challenging topic in the area of Systems Chemistry. The present article summarizes efforts to apply the information encoded in the base sequence of nucleic acids to assemble transient, dissipative DNA-based networks mimicking natural processes. The design principles of the transient nucleic acid-based systems are introduced. Triggered reaction moduli lead to a transient intermediary constituent recovered to the parent moduli by enzymes, DNAzyme, or light as control units are described. Transient DNA-based circuitries of enhanced complexities revealing temporal gated or cascaded transformations are demonstrated. Different applications of dynamically triggered transient circuits are introduced, including the temporal aggregation and deaggregation of plasmonic nanoparticles or semiconductor quantum dots and the control over their optical properties, the transient release and uptake of loads by aptamer scaffolds, and the transient reconfiguration of constitutional dynamic networks and the control over emergent catalytic functions. The future perspectives of dissipative nucleic acid-based networks and their potential future applications are discussed.