Nanoscale rotary apparatus formed from tight-fitting 3D DNA components.

ABSTRACT: We report a nanoscale rotary mechanism that reproduces some of the dynamic properties of biological rotary motors in the absence of an energy source, such as random walks on a circle with dwells at docking sites. Our mechanism is built modularly from tight-fitting components that were self-assembled using multilayer DNA origami. The apparatus has greater structural complexity than previous mechanically interlocked objects and features a well-defined angular degree of freedom without restricting the range of rotation. We studied the dynamics of our mechanism using single-particle experiments analogous to those performed previously with actin-labeled adenosine triphosphate synthases. In our mechanism, rotor mobility, the number of docking sites, and the dwell times at these sites may be cont

SUBMITTER: Ketterer P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4788491 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature