“…Synthesis of SiNP, chemical conjugation of SiNP and CNT with DNA oligonucleotide primers, ligation of rolling circle amplification (RCA) template (T) on SiNP-primer (CNT-P) and CNTprimer (CNT-P) and RCA polymerization of the nanoparticles were performed as previously described. 17 In brief, linear ssDNA (T, 10 µM, 30 µL) and 10X T4 DNA ligation buffer (500 mM Tris-HCl, 100 mM MgCl2, 10 mM ATP, 100 mM dithiothreitol (DTT), 7.5 µL) were added to 60 μL SiNP-P suspension (10 mg/mL) or CNT-P-T (800 µg/mL), followed by addition of T4 DNA ligase (400,000 U/mL, 2.5 µL, New England Biolabs) to ligate the nicked ends of the T oligonucleotide at 25 °C for 3 h. To synthesize SiNP/CNT-DNA hydrogels, the so-produced SiNP-P-T (50 µL) or CNT-P-T (50 µL) were then polymerized via RCA by mixing with dNTPs (10 mM, 10 µL), 10X BSA (10 mg/mL, 5 µL), 10X phi29 DNA polymerase buffer (500 mM Tris-HCl, 100 mM MgCl2, 100 mM (NH4)2SO4, 40 mM DTT, pH 7.5, 5 µL) and phi29 DNA polymerase (10,000 U/mL, 5 µL, New England Biolabs) at 30 °C for 48 h. Additional details on chemicals and oligonucleotide sequences (Table S1) are specified in the Supplementary Information.…”