Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.138, No.51, 16809-16814, 2016
Nonlinear Kinetic Behavior in Constitutional Dynamic Reaction Networks
Creating synthetic chemical systems which emulate the complexity observed in cells relies on exploiting chemical networks exhibiting nonlinear kinetic behavior. While control over reaction complexity using synthetic gene regulatory networks and DNA nanotechnology has developed greatly, little control exists over small molecule reaction networks. Toward this goal, we demonstrate a general framework for inducing nonlinear kinetic behavior in dynamic chemical networks based on molecules containing reversible chemical bonds. Specifically, this strategy relies on constituent species with differing thermodynamic stabilities that readily exchange components at rates that are faster than their formation rates. Such nonlinear networks (NLN) readily lead to sigmoidal kinetic profiles as a function of the relative thermodynamic stabilities of the constituent species. Furthermore, this behavior could be readily extended to more complex mixtures while maintaining nonlinearity. The generality of this method opens the possibility to generate nonlinear networks using a broad range of small molecule structures.