A Bipedal DNA Brownian Motor with Coordinated Legs

By Tosan Omabegho, R. Sha, Nadrian C. Seeman. Science, 2009

519 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b2de003548cf087a1d594ebbcbdc7c64983ea72d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

1. David J. Mooney
2. Nadrian C. Seeman
3. Nathaniel Huebsch

In Condensed Matter Physics

1. David J. Mooney
2. Nadrian C. Seeman

In Molecular Biology

1. Georg Seelig
2. David Y. Zhang
3. David J. Mooney
4. Nadrian C. Seeman
5. Peixuan Guo
6. William M. Shih

Citations in the corpus

• Nanomaterials Based on DNA (2010, background): “Recently, the same notion has been used to produce an autonomous walker, which can move without intervention once initiated (79).”
• Inspiration and application in the evolution of biomaterials (2009, background): “Likewise, DNA may inspire the construction of actuators that mimic this biopolymer's dynamic assembly and responsiveness to environmental cue”
• Dynamic DNA nanotechnology using strand-displacement reactions. (2011, background): “Only recently have researchers developed mechanisms for strand-displacement-based DNA walkers with autonomous and directed movemen”
• A BIRD’S EYE VIEW: TRACKING SLOW NANOMETER-SCALE MOVEMENTS OF SINGLE MOLECULAR NANO-ASSEMBLIES (2010, unknown): “…are limited by the kinetics of unwinding one DNA duplex and forming another, both $15–50 base pairs in length (Bath et al., 2009; Green et al., 2008; Omabegho et al., 2009; Sherman and Seeman, 2004; Shin and Pierce, 2004; Yin et al., 2004), leading to estimated velocities of $10 nm/h (Shin and…”