Using strands of nucleic acid and a fluorescence reporter, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech; Atlanta, GA) and colleagues have demonstrated basic computing operations inside a living mammalian cell. The research could lead to an artificial sensing system that could control a cell’s behavior in response to such stimuli as the presence of toxins or the development of cancer.
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The research uses DNA strand displacement, a technology that has been widely used outside of cells for the design of molecular circuits, motors, and sensors. Researchers modified the process to provide both “AND” and “OR” logic gates able to operate inside the living cells and interact with native messenger RNA (mRNA).
The tools they developed could provide a foundation for biocomputers able to sense, analyze, and modulate molecular information at the cellular level. Philip Santangelo, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, says the devices could sense an aberrant RNA, for instance, and then shut down cellular translation or induce cell death.
Strand displacement reactions are the biological equivalent of the switches or gates that form the foundation for silicon-based computing. They can be programmed to turn on or off in response to an external stimuli such as a molecule. An “AND” gate, for example, would switch when both conditions were met, while an “OR” gate would switch when either condition was met.
In the switches the researchers used, a fluorescence reporter molecule and its complementary quenching molecule were placed side-by-side to create an “off” mode. Binding of RNA in one of the strands then displaced a portion of nucleic acid, separating the molecules and allowing generation of a signal that created an “on” mode. Two “on” modes on adjacent nucleic acid strands created an “AND” gate.
Georg Seelig, assistant professor of computer science and engineering and electrical engineering at the University of Washington, says that in the longer term, the research team wants to expand this technology to create circuits with many inputs, such as those they have constructed in cell-free settings.
The researchers used ligands designed to bind to specific portions of the nucleic acid strands, which can be created as desired and produced by commercial suppliers.
Challenges in the research team's work were getting the devices into the cells without triggering the switches, providing operation rapid enough to be useful and not killing the human cell lines that the researchers used in the lab.
The nucleic acid computers ultimately operated as desired, and the next step is to use their switching to trigger the production of signaling chemicals that would prompt the desired reaction from the cells. Cellular activity is normally controlled by the production of proteins, so the nucleic acid switches will have to be given the ability to produce enough signaling molecules to induce a change.
Cells, of course, already know how to sense toxic molecules and the development malignant tendencies, and to then take action. But those safeguards can be turned off by viruses or cancer cells that know how to circumvent natural cellular processes.
Full details of the work appear in the journal Nature Nanotechnology; for more information, please visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.278.
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