Fig. 5. ATP-fueled transient colloid assembly (TCA), and dynamic DNA surface polymerization (TSP).

a Schematic illustration of DNA wrapping-induced TCA. b Time-dependent CLSM of TCA. Scale bars = 10 μm. c Schematic representation of TSP. d Time-dependent CLSM of transient DNA growth on colloidal surface. Scale bar = 5 μm; insert = 10 μm. e Time-dependent fluorescence intensity of the fluorescent shell for TCA with programmable lifetimes. Lines are guides to the eye. Error bars are standard deviations of 50 colloids. f Singlet fraction of the colloids for TCA (d1_b = 38 bp) and TSP. Points correspond to analysis at random places. g Thickness of the fluorescent shells for TSP and TCA at 1 h (i: TSP, ii: TCA, iii: extracted spectra of fluorescence intensities from i and ii). Scale bar, 1 μm. h Secondary DNA tile integration and surface function reconfiguration during a running TSP. The second tile with ATTO 647 was added 1 h after the Cy3 tile. CLSM before (i) and after (j) adding the ATTO 647 tile confirm the integration and reconfiguration. Scale bar = 2 μm. k Time dependent fluorescence intensities on the colloid surface. Lines are guides to the eye. Error bars are standard deviations of 50 colloids. Conditions for a: 10.0 μM dsDNA-Cy3, 12.0 μM ssDNA, 0.92 WU μL⁻¹ T4 DNA ligase, 1.0 U μL⁻¹ BsaI, ca. 0.167 mg mL⁻¹ docking strand modified colloids (ca. 1.17–1.67 × 10⁸ beads mL⁻¹), and 50 μM ATP, 37 °C. Conditions for c: same condition as a but using dsDNA functionalized colloids bearing sticky end a’ on the docking strand to initiate a surface tethered main chain of the DySS SfNAP. All CLSM measurements were conducted consecutively with the same microscopy settings (see Supplementary Table 1 for sequences).