<i>In situ</i> Generation of RNA Complexes for Synthetic Molecular Strand-Displacement Circuits in Autonomous Systems.

Abstract

Synthetic molecular circuits implementing DNA or RNA strand-displacement reactions can be used to build complex systems such as molecular computers and feedback control systems. Despite recent advances, application of nucleic acid-based circuits <i>in vivo</i> remains challenging due to a lack of efficient methods to produce their essential components, namely, multistranded complexes known as gates, <i>in situ</i>, i.e., in living cells or other autonomous systems. Here, we propose the use of naturally occurring self-cleaving ribozymes to cut a single-stranded RNA transcript into a gate complex of shorter strands, thereby opening new possibilities for the autonomous and continuous production of RNA strands in a stoichiometrically and structurally controlled way.