Reliable Self-assembly by Self-triggered Activation of Enveloped DNA Tiles

Although the design of DNA tiles has been optimised for efficient and specific self-assembly, assembly errors occur so often that applications for molecular computation remain limited. We propose the use of an enveloped tile consisting of a DXbase tile that carries a protector tile to suppress erroneous tile assembly. The design of the enveloped tile promotes the dissociation of the protector tile from the base tile through a self-triggered activation process, which keeps the outputs of the base tile stay protected until both base tile inputs have bonded correctly to the assembly. The enveloped tile design, the self-triggered activation that removes the protector tile and preliminary modelling results are presented.