Magnetic Fields Facilitate DNA-Mediated Charge Transport.

Exaggerated radical-induced DNA damage under magnetic fields is of great concern to medical biosafety and biomolecular electronic devices. In this report, the effects of an external magnetic field (MF) on DNA electronic conductivity were investigated by studying the efficiencies of photoinduced DNA-mediated charge transport (CT) via guanine damage. Under a static MF of 300 mT, positive enhancements in the decomposition of 8-cyclopropyldeoxyguanosine ((8CP)G) were observed at both the proximal and distal guanine doublets, indicating a more efficient propagation of radical cations and higher electronic conductivity of duplex DNA.

Programmable DNA-Mediated Multitasking Processor.

Because of DNA appealing features as perfect material, including minuscule size, defined structural repeat and rigidity, programmable DNA-mediated processing is a promising computing paradigm, which employs DNAs as information storing and processing substrates to tackle the computational problems. The massive parallelism of DNA hybridization exhibits transcendent potential to improve multitasking capabilities and yield a tremendous speed-up over the conventional electronic processors with stepwise signal cascade. As an example of multitasking capability, we present an in vitro programmable DNA-mediated optimal route planning processor as a functional unit embedded in contemporary navigation systems.