2020 (1)
Organic field‐effect transistors (OFETs) can be potentially employed to monitor cell activities for healthcare and medical treatment, because of their attractive properties such as ease of use, flexibility, and low‐cost manufacturing processes. Although current OFET‐based sensors are suitable for point‐of‐care testing, the establishment of real‐time monitoring methods is highly demanded to continuously monitor health conditions and/or biological cell activities. In this regard, we herein propose a microfluidic platform integrated with an extended‐gate type OFET for real‐time glucose monitoring. The detection mechanism of glucose depends on an artificial receptor phenylboronic acid and its boronate esterification. After the optimization of microfluidics for the OFET‐based sensor, we applied it to monitor glucose consumption and release in a model of pseudo liver cells. Random increase or decrease in changes of the …
2019 (1)
The power spectrum of the hydrogen-bond energy fluctuation of DNA was investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. A 1/f frequency response is found, even for simple configurations of DNA composed only of thymine bases and with the presence of an equal number of complementary strands. This suggests that various relaxation processes are involved as a general trend. The noise amplitude strongly depends on the temperature. These results indicate that experimental measurements of the hydrogen-bond energy noise may provide additional degrees of freedom for a wide range of studies from DNA nanotechnologies to biosensors.
2017 (2)
Biochemical systems in which multiple components take part in a given reaction are of increasing interest. Because the interactions between these different components are complex and difficult to predict from basic reaction kinetics, it is important to test for the effect of variations in the concentration for each reagent in a combinatorial manner. For example, in PCR, an increase in the concentration of primers initially increases template amplification, but large amounts of primers result in primer–dimer by-products that inhibit the amplification of the template. Manual titration of biochemical mixtures rapidly becomes costly and laborious, forcing scientists to settle for suboptimal concentrations. Here we present a droplet-based microfluidics platform for mapping of the concentration space of up to three reaction components followed by detection with a fluorescent readout. The concentration …
Biochemical systems in which multiple components take part in a given reaction are of increasing interest. Because the interactions between these different components are complex and difficult to predict from basic reaction kinetics, it is important to test for the effect of variations in the concentration for each reagent in a combinatorial manner. For example, in PCR, an increase in the concentration of primers initially increases template amplification, but large amounts of primers result in primer–dimer by-products that inhibit the amplification of the template. Manual titration of biochemical mixtures rapidly becomes costly and laborious, forcing scientists to settle for suboptimal concentrations. Here we present a droplet-based microfluidics platform for mapping of the concentration space of up to three reaction components followed by detection with a fluorescent readout. The concentration of each reaction component is …
2016 (4)
Analog molecular circuits can exploit the nonlinear nature of biochemical reaction networks to compute low-precision outputs with fewer resources than digital circuits. This analog computation is similar to that employed by gene-regulation networks. Although digital systems have a tractable link between structure and function, the nonlinear and continuous nature of analog circuits yields an intricate functional landscape, which makes their design counter-intuitive, their characterization laborious and their analysis delicate. Here, using droplet-based microfluidics, we map with high resolution and dimensionality the bifurcation diagrams of two synthetic, out-of-equilibrium and nonlinear programs: a bistable DNA switch and a predator–prey DNA oscillator. The diagrams delineate where function is optimal, dynamics bifurcates and models fail. Inverse problem solving on these large-scale data …
We propose a passive cooling device which converts thermal energy into fluid flow via Marangoni effect: a gradient of temperature induces a gradient of surface tension. This in turn triggers a fluid flow at the air/liquid interface which runs transversally to the heat flow. We show how to amplify the global fluid flow thanks to geometrical optimization. We also show how the addition of an asymmetric small wall across the channel reduces the backflow and improves our device.
We propose a passive cooling device which converts thermal energy into fluid flow via Marangoni effect: a gradient of temperature induces a gradient of surface tension. This in turn triggers a fluid flow at the air/liquid interface which runs transversally to the heat flow. We show how to amplify the global fluid flow thanks to geometrical optimization. We also show how the addition of an asymmetric small wall across the channel reduces the backflow and improves our device.
Analog molecular circuits can exploit the nonlinear nature of biochemical reaction networks to compute low-precision outputs with fewer resources than digital circuits. This analog computation is similar to that employed by gene-regulation networks. Although digital systems have a tractable link between structure and function, the nonlinear and continuous nature of analog circuits yields an intricate functional landscape, which makes their design counter-intuitive, their characterization laborious and their analysis delicate. Here, using droplet-based microfluidics, we map with high resolution and dimensionality the bifurcation diagrams of two synthetic, out-of-equilibrium and nonlinear programs: a bistable DNA switch and a predator–prey DNA oscillator. The diagrams delineate where function is optimal, dynamics bifurcates and models fail. Inverse problem solving on these large-scale data sets indicates interference …
2015 (1)
In the past three decades, DNA has emerged as a versatile polymer to build and program at the nanoscale, allowing the construction of a rich variety of nanostructures. The programmability of DNA has also paved the way for the interdisciplinary field of molecular programming, which seeks to understand how to best program molecules‒inspired by the vast information processing capabilities of cells. Here we focus on recent efforts in LIMMS aimed at combining microsystems and molecular programs, demonstrating how the dimensions and throughput offered by the former complement aptly the molecular control of the latter.
2013 (7)
DNA multiplication tables: A combinatorial mechanism for DNA strand displacement shares the same structure as matrix multiplication (see scheme). This system can be used to perform linear operations on DNA concentrations, such as the calculation of a weighted sum.
DNA has proved to be an exquisite substrate to compute at the molecular scale. However, nonlinear computations (such as amplification, comparison or restoration of signals) remain costly in term of strands and are prone to leak. Kim et al. showed how competition for an enzymatic resource could be exploited in hybrid DNA/enzyme circuits to compute a powerful nonlinear primitive: the winner-take-all (WTA) effect. Here, we first show theoretically how the nonlinearity of the WTA effect allows the robust and compact classification of four patterns with only 16 strands and three enzymes. We then generalize this WTA effect to DNA-only circuits and demonstrate similar classification capabilities with only 23 strands.
We report the splitting of an oscillating DNA circuit into∼ 700 droplets with picoliter volumes. Upon incubation at constant temperature, the droplets display sustained oscillations that can be observed for more than a day. Superimposed to the bulk behaviour, we find two intriguing new phenomena–slow desynchronization between the compartments and kinematic spatial waves–and investigate their possible origin. This approach provides a route to study the influence of small volume effects in biology, and paves the way to technological applications of compartmentalized molecular programs controlling complex dynamics.
The reductionist approach has revolutionized biology in the past 50 years. Yet its limits are being felt as the complexity of cellular interactions is gradually revealed by high-throughput technology. In order to make sense of the deluge of “omic data”, a hypothesis-driven view is needed to understand how biomolecular interactions shape cellular networks. We review recent efforts aimed at building in vitro biochemical networks that reproduce the flow of genetic regulation. We highlight how those efforts have culminated in the rational construction of biochemical oscillators and bistable memories in test tubes. We also recapitulate the lessons learned about in vivo biochemical circuits such as the importance of delays and competition, the links between topology and kinetics, as well as the intriguing resemblance between cellular reaction networks and ecosystems.
DNA has proved to be an exquisite substrate to compute at the molecular scale. However, nonlinear computations (such as amplification, comparison or restoration of signals) remain costly in term of strands and are prone to leak. Kim et al. showed how competition for an enzymatic resource could be exploited in hybrid DNA/enzyme circuits to compute a powerful nonlinear primitive: the winner-take-all (WTA) effect. Here, we first show theoretically how the nonlinearity of the WTA effect allows the robust and compact classification of four patterns with only 16 strands and three enzymes. We then generalize this WTA effect to DNA-only circuits and demonstrate similar classification capabilities with only 23 strands.
DNA has proved to be an exquisite substrate to compute at the molecular scale. However, nonlinear computations (such as amplification, comparison or restoration of signals) remain costly in term of strands and are prone to leak. Kim et al. showed how competition for an enzymatic resource could be exploited in hybrid DNA/enzyme circuits to compute a powerful nonlinear primitive: the winner-take-all (WTA) effect. Here, we first show theoretically how the nonlinearity of the WTA effect allows the robust and compact classification of four patterns with only 16 strands and three enzymes. We then generalize this WTA effect to DNA-only circuits and demonstrate similar classification capabilities with only 23 strands.
We report the splitting of an oscillating DNA circuit into ∼700 droplets with picoliter volumes. Upon incubation at constant temperature, the droplets display sustained oscillations that can be observed for more than a day. Superimposed to the bulk behaviour, we find two intriguing new phenomena – slow desynchronization between the compartments and kinematic spatial waves – and investigate their possible origin. This approach provides a route to study the influence of small volume effects in biology, and paves the way to technological applications of compartmentalized molecular programs controlling complex dynamics.
2012 (2)
Cells rely on limited resources such as enzymes or transcription factors to process signals and make decisions. However, independent cellular pathways often compete for a common molecular resource. Competition is difficult to analyze because of its nonlinear global nature, and its role remains unclear. Here we show how decision pathways such as transcription networks may exploit competition to process information. Competition for one resource leads to the recognition of convex sets of patterns, whereas competition for several resources (overlapping or cascaded regulons) allows even more general pattern recognition. Competition also generates surprising couplings, such as correlating species that share no resource but a common competitor. The mechanism we propose relies on three primitives that are ubiquitous in cells: multiinput motifs, competition for a resource, and positive …
Water-in-oil microdroplets offer microreactors for compartmentalized biochemical reactions with high throughput. Recently, the combination with a sol-gel switch ability, using agarose-in-oil microdroplets, has increased the range of possible applications, allowing for example the capture of amplicons in the gel phase for the preservation of monoclonality during a PCR reaction. Here, we report a new method for generating such agarose-in-oil microdroplets on a microfluidic device, with minimized inlet dead volume, on-chip cooling, and in situ monitoring of biochemical reactions within the gelified microbeads. We used a flow-focusing microchannel network and successfully generated agarose microdroplets at room temperature using the “push-pull” method. This method consists in pushing the oil continuous phase only, while suction is applied to the device outlet. The agarose phase …
2011 (2)
We report reversible logic circuits made of DNA. The circuits are based on an AND gate that is designed to be thermodynamically and kinetically reversible and to respond nonlinearly to the concentrations of its input molecules. The circuits continuously recompute their outputs, allowing them to respond to changing inputs. They are robust to imperfections in their inputs.
Hybridization of DNA strands can be used to build molecular devices, and control of the kinetics of DNA hybridization is a crucial element in the design and construction of functional and autonomous devices. Toehold-mediated strand displacement has proved to be a powerful mechanism that allows programmable control of DNA hybridization. So far, attempts to control hybridization kinetics have mainly focused on the length and binding strength of toehold sequences. Here we show that insertion of a spacer between the toehold and displacement domains provides additional control: modulation of the nature and length of the spacer can be used to control strand-displacement rates over at least 3 orders of magnitude. We apply this mechanism to operate displacement reactions in potentially useful kinetic regimes: the kinetic proofreading and concentration-robust regimes.