As featured in: See Weian Zhao et al., Chem. Soc. Rev., 2014, 43, 3324. Featuring work from Dr Weian Zhao’s group at University of California, Irvine whose research focuses on the development of bioengineering tools for disease diagnosis and regenerative medicine. Rolling circle amplification: a versatile tool for chemical biology, materials science and medicine Rolling circle amplification (RCA) is an eicient and versatile isothermal enzymatic process to produce long nucleic acid products with defined sequences, valencies and structures. This review introduces the fundamental engineering principles of RCA, and discusses recent RCA-based bioanalytical tools, multivalent molecular scaffolds and nanostructures for applications in biology, diagnostics and therapeutics. Registered charity number: 207890 www.rsc.org/chemsocrev