DNA catalysts are fundamental building blocks for diverse molecular information-processing circuits. Allosteric control of DNA catalysts has been developed to activate desired catalytic pathways at desired times. Here we introduce a new type of DNA catalyst that we call a cooperative catalyst: a pair of reversible reactions are employed to drive a catalytic cycle in which two signal species, which can be interpreted as an activator and an input, both exhibit catalytic behavior for output production. We demonstrate the role of a dissociation toehold in controlling the kinetics of the reaction pathway and the significance of a wobble base pair in promoting the robustness of the activator. We show near-complete output production with input and activator concentrations that are 0.1 times the gate concentration. The system involves just a double-stranded gate species and a single-stranded fuel species, as simple as the seesaw DNA catalyst, which has no allosteric control. The simplicity and modularity of the design make the cooperative DNA catalyst an exciting addition to strand-displacement motifs for general-purpose computation and dynamics.

中文翻译：

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合作的 DNA 催化剂

DNA 催化剂是各种分子信息处理电路的基本组成部分。已开发出对 DNA 催化剂的变构控制以在所需时间激活所需的催化途径。在这里，我们介绍了一种新型 DNA 催化剂，我们称之为协同催化剂：采用一对可逆反应来驱动催化循环，其中两种信号物质（可以解释为活化剂和输入）都表现出催化行为输出生产。我们证明了解离立足点在控制反应途径动力学中的作用以及摆动碱基对在促进活化剂稳健性中的重要性。我们展示了接近完整的输出生产，输入和活化剂浓度是门浓度的 0.1 倍。该系统仅涉及双链门物质和单链燃料物质，就像跷跷板 DNA 催化剂一样简单，它没有变构控制。设计的简单性和模块化使得协同 DNA 催化剂成为链置换基序的令人兴奋的补充，用于通用计算和动力学。