In this section
@article{Cabello-Garcia:2025,
author = {Cabello-Garcia, J and Mukherjee, R and Bae, W and Stan, G-B and Ouldridge, TE},
journal = {Nature Chemistry},
title = {Information propagation through enzyme-free catalytic templating of DNA dimerization with weak product inhibition},
year = {2025}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - Information propagation by sequence-specific, template-catalyzed molecular assembly is a key motif facilitating life’s biochemical complexity, allowing the production ofthousands of sequence-defined proteins from only 20 distinct building blocks. By contrast, exploitation of catalytic templating is rare in non-biological contexts, particularlyin enzyme-free environments, where even the template-catalyzed formation of dimers is challenging. The main obstacle is product inhibition: the tendency of products to bind to templates more strongly than individual monomers, preventing catalytic turnover. We present a rationally designed enzyme-free system in which a DNA template catalyzes, with weak product inhibition, the production of sequence-specific DNA dimers. We demonstrate selective templating of 9 different dimers with high specificity and catalytic turnover; we then show that the products can participate in downstream reactions, and that the dimerization can be coupled to covalent bond formation. Most importantly, our mechanism demonstrates a rational design principle for engineering information propagation by molecular templating.
AU - Cabello-Garcia,J
AU - Mukherjee,R
AU - Bae,W
AU - Stan,G-B
AU - Ouldridge,TE
PY - 2025///
SN - 1755-4330
TI - Information propagation through enzyme-free catalytic templating of DNA dimerization with weak product inhibition
T2 - Nature Chemistry
ER -
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