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Why is it interesting? Nucleic acid-templated reactions enable the design of conditional reaction systems, in which bond formation occurs only when a particular DNA or RNA molecule is present. Such reaction systems are currently being explored for applications in DNA/RNA diagnosis, drug screening and as a means to design gene expression specific therapy. For example, imagine a DNA/RNA detection assay that would work inside a living cell with PCR-like sensitivity. |
What are we doing?
A great number of chemical reaction systems have been developed to allow the sensitive detection of DNA and RNA even within living cells. However, a critical analysis of previous work (including ours) shows that applications are restricted to the highly specialized labs of the developers. It seems that none of the seemingly powerful methods is used by researchers outside.
Our contributions: