Spatial organization based reciprocal switching of enzyme-free nucleic acid circuits.

We report a new nucleic acid sensing strategy through an intelligent design of spatial organization based reciprocal switching of catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA). The so-called SORS-CHA not only turns a well-designed CHA circuit into a relatively universal detector for any targeting sequence, but also guarantees a much enhanced signal resolution and a believability to minimize the misreading induced by unexpected signal drifts. With more trustworthy results, but a simpler sequence design, nucleic acid circuits could become competitive in real-world applications.