A Simple Thermodynamic Model for DNA-Strand Displacement Reactions in Presence of Base-Pair Mismatches

Toehold-mediated strand displacement is the most abundantly used method to achieve dynamic switching in DNA-based nanotechnology. A single-stranded ‘invader’ strand binds to the ‘toehold’ overhang of a target strand and replaces a target-bound ’incumbent’ strand. Hereby, complementarity of the invader to the single-stranded toehold provides the energetic bias of the reaction. Recently, it has been shown that the incorporating of mismatches...