Dynamic Addressing Molecular Robot (DAMR): An Effective and Efficient Trial-and-Error Approach for the Analysis of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms.

ABSTRACT

Accurate and efficient molecular recognition plays a crucial role in the fields of molecular detection and diagnostics. Conventional trial-and-error-based molecular recognition approaches have always been challenged in distinguishing minimal differences between targets and non-targets, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of oligonucleotides. To address these challenges, here, a novel concept of dynamic addressing analysis is proposed. In this concept, by dissecting the regions of the target and creating a corresponding recognizer, it is possible to eliminate the inaccuracy and inefficiency of recognition. To achieve this concept, a Dynamic Addressing Molecular Robot (DAMR), a DNA-based dynamic addressing device is developed which is capable of dynamically locating targets. DAMR is designed to first bind to the conserved region of the target while addressing the specific region dynamically until accurate recognition is achieved. DAMR has provided an approach for analyzing low-resolution targets and has been used for analyzing SNP of miR-196a2 in both cell and serum samples, which has opened new avenues for effective and efficient molecular recognition.