Described herein is a method to create dendritic biocompatible polymers from pairs of complementary dendritic nucleic acid monomers in a controlled manner, using polymerization triggers. The dendritic monomers are constituted of nucleic acids and an organic polymer capable of self-assembly. Each polymer contains approximately 200 dendrites that can be used to attach labels and constitute a biologically compatible signal amplification technology. Depending on the context this technology could be used to reveal the presence of a large variety of analytes such as specific nucleic acid molecules, small molecules, proteins, and peptides.