To maximize desired products in engineered cellular factories it is often necessary to optimize metabolic flux. While a number of works have focused on metabolic pathway enhancement through genetic regulators and synthetic scaffolds, these approaches require time-intensive design and optimization with limited versatility and capacity for scale-up. Recently, nucleic-acid nanotechnology has emerged as an encouraging approach to overcome these limitations and create systems for modular programmable control of metabolic flux. Using toehold-mediated strand displacement (TMSD), nucleic acid constructs can be made into dynamic devices that recognize specific biomolecular triggers for conditional control of gene regulation as well as design of dynamic synthetic scaffolds. This review will consider the various approaches that have been used thus far to control metabolic flux using toehold-gated devices.

为了在工程化的细胞工厂中最大化所需产品，通常必须优化代谢通量。尽管许多工作致力于通过基因调节剂和合成支架增强代谢途径，但这些方法需要耗时的设计和优化，且通用性和放大能力有限。最近，核酸纳米技术已经成为一种令人鼓舞的方法，可以克服这些局限性并创建用于代谢通量模块化可编程控制的系统。使用脚趾介导的链置换（TMSD），可以将核酸构建体制成动态设备，这些设备可以识别特定的生物分子触发条件，以有条件地控制基因调节以及设计动态合成支架。