DNA Reaction Networks Composed of Standardized Switchable Molecular Devices for Recording Temporal Molecular Events

The processing of temporal information plays a key supporting role in accurately perceiving molecular dynamic changes and making complex molecular decisions. As such, the development of artificial molecular networks that can efficiently process and record temporal molecular events (TMEs) has high scientific and practical value. Among them, DNA reaction networks (DRNs) have opened up an avenue for processing molecular temporal information, owing to their outstanding advantages. Therefore, we developed a standardized switchable molecular device, which is used to build DRNs that can handle temporal information on multiple types of biomolecules. Standardized molecular devices allow rapid network assembly, and their efficient state switching affords flexibility to the networks. The experimental findings show that the collaborative state switching network (CSSN) and cross-inhibition network (CIN) built from these molecular devices not only possess temporal resolution for DNA molecular events (MEs) but also show time sensitivity over specific time spans. Taking two microRNAs (miRNAs) as research subjects further confirms the temporal resolution ability of the CIN. Moreover, through an extended CIN, the perception of the temporal sequence of two proteins was realized, highlighting the proposed DRNs’ application potential in fields including molecular information processing, biosensing, and disease diagnosis and treatment.