Chapter 5: Molecular Computation via Polymerase Strand Displacement Reactions

The field of DNA computing has had many major breakthroughs since the early results of Adleman. Recent DNA computing works have focused primarily on enzyme-free computing architectures, that is, DNA-only circuits and devices. The rationale behind engineering such systems is to have biologically simpler machines. This offers several benefits such as no dependency on temperature control systems. However, recently the use of the enzyme-based system is gaining momentum yet again. These systems also compute using strand displacement, similar to enzyme-free architectures. However, the strand displacement is facilitated with a polymerase enzyme. Such enzymatic use provides an alternative method for the design and development of such systems. In this work, we discuss two computing avenues, namely, DNA circuits and chemical reaction networks along with a section on methods and protocols describing how polymerase-based systems operate. We end this chapter with a brief discussion and future possibilities of such emerging avenues of DNA computing.