Deoxyribozymes that recode sequence information

Allosteric nucleic acid ligases have been used previ-ously to transform analyte-binding into the formation of oligonucleotide templates that can be amplified and detected. We have engineered binary deoxyri-bozyme ligases whose two components are brought together by bridging oligonucleotide effectors. The engineered ligases can ‘read ’ one sequence and then ‘write ’ (by ligation) a separate, distinct sequence, which can in turn be uniquely amplified. The binary deoxyribozymes show great specificity, can discrimi-nate against a small number of mutations in the effec-tor, and can read and recode DNA information with high fidelity even in the presence of excess obscuring genomic DNA. In addition, the binary deoxyribozymes can read non-natural nucleotides and write natural sequence information. The binary deoxyribozyme ligases could potentially be used in a variety of app-lications, including the detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms in genomic DNA or the identification of short nucleic acids such as microRNAs