Nature

Circular single-stranded DNA as a programmable vector for gene regulation in cell-free protein expression systems

Cell-free protein expression (CFE) systems have emerged as a critical platform for synthetic biology research. The vectors for protein expression in CFE systems mainly rely on double-stranded DNA and ...
Nature

Activation of enzymatic catalysis via nucleic acid hybridization affords synergistic coupling of specificity, potency, and signal amplification

In this work, we establish the use of nucleic acid hybridization to program the activation of catalysis in enzymes. We do this via “thiol switching”, using thiolated oligonucleotides: a protein is ...