Functional capabilities of short deoxyribonucleic acids beyond storing information

Abstract

Deoxyribonucleic acids have many different applications beyond the storage of information, like catalysis or binding of targets. Utilizing these capabilities in life-like systems, like synthetic cells, allows for encoding of function or rudimentary metabolism without the requirement of encoding the entire transcription-translation apparatus of proteins. In this work, we present two different systems for the evolution of functional deoxyribonucleic acids in a bacterial or synthetic cell environment. The bacterial system allows for the potential evolution of DNAzymes or DNA based aptamers intracellularly, a critical requirement for high efficacy in a cellular environment. The synthetic cell system shows how to link the activity of a DNA cargo molecule in dissipative coacervates to their morphology, enabling potential selection and evolution under synthetic cell conditions, a step further towards the generation of synthetic life-like systems. Taken together, these methods allow for evolution of more relevant functional nucleic acids for the environment they will be employed in and increasing efficacy of their function.