Decoy DNA Protects Molecular Tension Probes from DNase Degradation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
DNA-based molecular probes are essential tools for visualizing and quantifying mechanotransduction at the single-molecule level. However, their application in live-cell environments is severely limited by DNase-mediated degradation, which shortens probe lifespan and introduces false-positive signals. Here, we present a decoy DNA strategy where an excess of unmodified double-stranded DNA competitively binds DNases, effectively preserving functional DNA probes. This approach extends probe stability from 1-2 h to beyond 24 h, substantially improving signal integrity in live-cell tension imaging. In contrast to structurally modified nucleic acids, decoy DNA can be readily applied to existing DNA probe systems, enabling seamless integration without the need for additional validation or calibration. This cost-effective and scalable strategy provides a generalizable framework for stabilizing DNA-based molecular tools in DNase-rich environments, enabling high-precision mechanobiology studies across diverse cell types and extended experiment durations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".