Molecular devices with information-processing capabilities hold great promise for developing intelligent nanorobotics. Here we demonstrate a DNA navigator system that can perform single-molecule parallel depth-first search on a ten-vertex rooted tree defined on a two-dimensional DNA origami platform. Pathfinding by the DNA navigators exploits a localized strand exchange cascade, which is initiated at a unique trigger site on the origami with subsequent automatic progression along paths defined by DNA hairpins containing a universal traversal sequence. Each single-molecule navigator autonomously explores one of the possible paths through the tree. A specific solution path connecting a given pair of start and end vertices can then be easily extracted from the set of all paths taken by the navigators collectively. The solution path laid out on origami is illustrated with single-molecule imaging. Our approach points towards the realization of molecular materials with embedded computational functions operating at the single-molecule level.

具有信息处理能力的分子设备对于开发智能纳米机器人具有广阔的前景。在这里，我们演示了一种DNA导航器系统，该系统可以在二维DNA折纸平台上定义的十个顶点根树上执行单分子并行深度优先搜索。DNA导航员的寻路利用了局部链交换级联，该级联是在折纸上的唯一触发位点启动的，随后沿着包含通用遍历序列的DNA发夹所定义的路径自动进行。每个单分子导航器自主探索通过树的可能路径之一。然后，可以很容易地从导航员共同采取的所有路径集中提取连接给定起点和终点对的特定解决方案路径。用单分子成像说明了折纸上的溶液路径。我们的方法指向具有在单分子水平上运行的嵌入式计算功能的分子材料的实现。