Abstract One-pot CRISPR diagnostics face a fundamental incompatibility: isothermal nucleic acid amplification enables rapid target accumulation, whereas CRISPR activation irreversibly consumes those substrates, destabilizing reaction kinetics. Here we show that reaction order can be programmed into DNA primers through thermodynamic design. Differences in primer-binding strength create two sequential amplification stages, delaying CRISPR activation until enough amplicons have accumulated without physical separation or external control. The design also introduces the protospacer adjacent motif (PAM), a short sequence required for CRISPR recognition, through the primer rather than relying on its presence in the native target, expanding target accessibility while retaining single-nucleotide discrimination. An ordinary differential equation model captures the threshold behavior and establishes a predictable framework for primer design. Building on this principle, we develop Thermodynamically Encoded Molecular Programming for One-pot diagnostics (TEMPO), which achieves attomolar sensitivity within 30 min and enables sequencing-concordant SNP genotyping and pathogen detection in a single-step microfluidic format.
Wu et al. (Tue,) studied this question.