Amazing stuff! What is the potential?
"Physicists have built a molecular-scale motor entirely from DNA strands, and used it to store energy by winding up a DNA ‘spring’.
It is not the first DNA nanomotor, but it’s “certainly the first one to actually perform measurable mechanical work” ...
Living cells are stuffed with molecular machines, including rotary motors; these carry out a range of tasks, from wiggling a bacterium’s flagellum to producing ATP molecules that make up a cell’s energy stocks. These motors often use ratchet mechanisms, similar to the toothed wheels in clockwork that allow rotations in one direction but not the other. ..."
Living cells are stuffed with molecular machines, including rotary motors; these carry out a range of tasks, from wiggling a bacterium’s flagellum to producing ATP molecules that make up a cell’s energy stocks. These motors often use ratchet mechanisms, similar to the toothed wheels in clockwork that allow rotations in one direction but not the other. ..."
From the abstract:
"To impart directionality to the motions of a molecular mechanism, one must overcome the random thermal forces that are ubiquitous on such small scales and in liquid solution at ambient temperature. ... Under conditions away from thermodynamic equilibrium, directional motion may be achieved within the framework of Brownian ratchets, which are diffusive mechanisms that have broken inversion symmetry. Ratcheting is thought to underpin the function of many natural biological motors, such as the F1F0-ATPase and it has been demonstrated experimentally in synthetic microscale systems (for example, to our knowledge, first in ref. 3) and also in artificial molecular motors created by organic chemical synthesis. DNA nanotechnology has yielded a variety of nanoscale mechanisms, including pivots, hinges, crank sliders and rotary systems, which can adopt different configurations, for example, triggered by strand-displacement reactions18,19 or by changing environmental parameters such as pH, ionic strength, temperature, external fields and by coupling their motions to those of natural motor proteins20,21,22,23,24,25,26. This previous work and considering low-Reynolds-number dynamics and inherent stochasticity27,28 led us to develop a nanoscale rotary motor built from DNA origami that is driven by ratcheting and whose mechanical capabilities approach those of biological motors such as F1F0-ATPase."
A DNA origami rotary ratchet motor
The motors are built from DNA strands arranged into triangular platforms attached to a long, rotating arm.
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