DNAzyme-mediated catalysis with only guanosine and cytidine nucleotides

Single-stranded DNA molecules have the capacity to adopt catalytically active structures known as DNAzymes, although the fundamental limits of this ability have not been determined. Starting with a parent DNAzyme composed of all four types of standard nucleotides, we conducted a search of the surrounding sequence space to identify functional derivatives with catalytic cores composed of only three, and subsequently only two types of nucleotides. …