Background

Hydrogels form three-dimentional network structures by cross-linking hydrophilic polymers. Since DNA bonds sequence specifically by only bonding complemental bases, it is easy to design the construction of DNA as there are only four kinds of bases; adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. Consequently, DNA hydrogels ―hydrogels made of DNA, have attracted much attention recently as one of structural DNA nanotechnologies. DNA hydrogels can transit from gel to sol in response to photon^[1], temperature^[2], pH^[3], physical force etc. This means DNA hydrogels have high responsivity over a wide range of physical states. Therefore, we aimed to make a DNA hydrogel whose gel condition ―whether it remains gel or transitions into sol, differs according to the patterns of input DNA strands when inputting with certain sequences. In other words, we aimed to make a DNA hydrogel that works as a DNA AND gate.

Reference

[1] Kandatsu, D., et al. “Reversible Gel-Sol Transition of a Photo-Responsive DNA Gel.” ChemBioChem 17.12(2016): 1118-1121.

[2] Liu, W., et al.” A rapid temperature-responsive sol–gel reversible poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-g-methylcellulose copolymer hydrogel” Biomaterials 25(2004):3005-3012.

[3] Cheng, E., et al. “A pH-triggered, fast-responding DNA hydrogel” Angewandte Chemie – International Edition 48.41(2009): 7660-7663.