Mercury mediated DNA–Au/Ag nanocluster ensembles to generate a gray code encoder for biocomputing

Abstract

Boolean operations utilizing DNA as a platform for biocomputing have become a promising tool for next-generation bio-molecular computers. In the whole process of any binary data transmission, bit errors are unavoidable and commonly occur. Cascades of exclusive-OR (XOR) operations show the great potential to evaluate these errors by introducing a parity generator (pG) and a parity checker (pC). Herein, we constructed a DNA hybrid architecture platform employing a chemosensing ensemble of mercury-mediated DNA–Au/Ag nanoclusters (M–Au/Ag NCs) to operate unconventional pG/pC for “error detection”. Taking advantage of pG/pC, the transmitted and received data is converted to secure information using a binary to gray code encoder. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first molecular gray code encoder for biocomputing, which discovers an exciting avenue to protect information security through sophisticated logic circuits.