All known natural enzymes are made of protein or RNA. In contrast, DNA is almost exclusively used by cells to store genetic information, and has never been found to serve as an enzyme in modern organisms. This has led many researchers to believe that DNA must be catalytically inert.

The first report of a deoxyribozyme or catalytic DNA, created by in vitro evolution from random sequences, showed that single-stranded DNA molecules are indeed capable of greatly accelerating chemical transformations in a substrate. Since this initial report, researchers in the Breaker lab have explored deoxyribozyme-mediated catalysis of other chemical reactions including the reactions necessary for DNA cloning, DNA-catalyzed RNA cleavage using other cofactors such as histidine, and DNA catalysis in complex reaction mixtures.

DNA is capable of catalyzing a variety of chemical reactions either with the assistance of bound cofactors or entirely from the chemical diversity present in the chemical composition of DNA itself. In addition, several structures of DNA aptamers have been solved that show that DNA is adept at forming binding pockets for small molecules. Although, no structures of active deoxyribozymes have been solved, current findings suggest that single-stranded DNA is capable of forming intricate structures that exhibit robust and diverse catalytic function.