They are usually engineered ribonucleic acid (Harris et al.) molecules. They can possess various Boolean logic functions, including NOT, YES, OR, AND, and others. They can sense different molecular signals (effectors), including small molecules, RNA and DNA oligonucleotides, polypeptides, and others. The allosteric domain(s), which bind the effector(s), is distant from the catalytic center of the ribozyme.
Published in Chapter:
Nucleic Acids-Based Nanotechnology: Engineering Principals and Applications
Robert Penchovsky (Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria)
Copyright: © 2014
|Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-5824-0.ch016
Abstract
Nanobiotechnology is emerging as a valuable field that integrates research from science and technology to create novel nanodevices and nanostructures with various applications in modern nanotechnology. Applications of nanobiotechnology are employed in biomedical and pharmaceutical research, biosensoring, nanofluidics, self-assembly of nanostructures, nanopharmaceutics, molecular computing, and others. It has been proven that nucleic acids are a very suitable medium for self-assembly of diverse nanostructures and catalytic nanodevices for various applications. In this chapter, the authors discuss various applications of nucleic-based nanotechnology. The areas discussed here include building nanostructures using DNA oligonucleodite, self-assembly of integrated RNA-based nanodevices for molecular computing and diagnostics, antibacterial drug discovery, exogenous control of gene expression, and gene silencing.