Publication Date:
2009-04-04
Description:
A substantial challenge in engineering molecular motors is designing mechanisms to coordinate the motion between multiple domains of the motor so as to bias random thermal motion. For bipedal motors, this challenge takes the form of coordinating the movement of the biped's legs so that they can move in a synchronized fashion. To address this problem, we have constructed an autonomous DNA bipedal walker that coordinates the action of its two legs by cyclically catalyzing the hybridization of metastable DNA fuel strands. This process leads to a chemically ratcheted walk along a directionally polar DNA track. By covalently cross-linking aliquots of the walker to its track in successive walking states, we demonstrate that this Brownian motor can complete a full walking cycle on a track whose length could be extended for longer walks. We believe that this study helps to uncover principles behind the design of unidirectional devices that can function without intervention. This device should be able to fulfill roles that entail the performance of useful mechanical work on the nanometer scale.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3470906/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3470906/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Omabegho, Tosan -- Sha, Ruojie -- Seeman, Nadrian C -- R37 GM029554/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Apr 3;324(5923):67-71. doi: 10.1126/science.1170336.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19342582" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Base Sequence
;
Binding Sites
;
DNA/*chemistry
;
DNA, Single-Stranded/*chemistry
;
Furocoumarins/chemistry
;
Inverted Repeat Sequences
;
Nanotechnology/methods
;
Nucleic Acid Conformation
;
Nucleic Acid Denaturation
;
Nucleic Acid Hybridization
;
Ultraviolet Rays
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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