Evolution of Artificial Base Pairs with Hydrogen Bond Complementarity

Artificial base pairs, from the perspective of synthetic biology, are designed to contain the features of modularity, orthogonality, and manipulability. And the development of artificial base pairs has been endowed with responsibility to understand the biological process, improve the recognition capacity and stability of aptamers, and develop the nucleoside drugs, diagnosis, and drug delivery. In this review, we first gave a concise introduction of artificial base pairs based on their interaction modes including alternative hydrogen bonding, hydrophobic interaction, and metal coordination. Then we displayed the detailed information of artificial base pairs with hydrogen bonding interaction, and analyzed how the changes of their structures affect their functions. Subsequently, we highlighted the applications of functional artificial base pairs in aptamer discovery, diagnosis, and drug delivery. Finally, an insight into the remaining challenges and future perspective of the artificial bases was provided.