Spring-loaded DNA origami arrays as energy-supplied hardware for modular nanorobots

Abstract

DNA origami nanodevices allow us to mimic cellular functions in a rationally controlled manner. They describe machineries which respond to environmental stimuli by conducting different tasks. To date, this mostly is achieved by constructing conformational two-state switches which upon activation by stimuli change their conformation resulting in the performance of a priorly programmed task. Their applicability however is often limited to a single, specific stimuli - output combination due to their intrinsic properties as two-state systems only. This makes expanding them further to include multiple stimuli/ outputs challenging. Here, we address this problem by introducing reconfigurable DNA origami arrays as a coupled network of two-state systems. We use this network to create a universal design strategy in which different operational units can be incorporated into any two-state system of our nanorobot. The resulting nanorobot is capable of receiving different stimuli, computing the response to the received stimuli using multi-level Boolean logic gating and yielding multiple programmed output operations with controlled order, timing and spatial position. We expect that this strategy will be a crucial step towards further developing DNA origami nanorobots for applications in various technological fields.