DNA nanomachines articles from across Nature Portfolio

Various methods, using DNA, have been reported for the recording of biomolecular interactions, but most are either destructive in nature or are limited to reporting pairwise interactions. Here the authors develop DNA-based motors, termed ‘crawlers’, that roam around and record their trajectories to allow the examination of molecular environments.

Contractile rings are formed from cytoskeletal filaments, specific crosslinkers and motor proteins during cell division. Here, authors form micron-scale contractile DNA rings from DNA nanotubes and synthetic crosslinkers, with both simulations and experiments showing ring contraction without motor proteins, offering a potential first step towards synthetic cell division machinery.

The nanospace confinement of a magnetic nanoparticle within a porous cage, coupled with an encodable DNA clutch interface, enables a remotely powered and controlled rotary nanomotor that is autoresponsive to its microenvironment.

DNA tiles lay the foundation for programmable self-assembly of diverse DNA nanostructures. Here, the authors present a set of T-shaped crossover DNA tiles for various 2D tessellation and nanoring reconfiguration.

Computational frameworks for structural dynamics are in continuous need of being developed. Here the authors present a a computational framework based on Langevin dynamics to analyze structural dynamics and reconfiguration of DNA assemblies, offering a rational method for designing responsive and reconfigurable DNA machines

A nanoscale DNA origami turbine is shown to perform mechanical rotation by directly harvesting transmembrane potential energy from an ion-concentration gradient across a solid-state nanopore. The direction of rotation is set by the designed chiral twist in the turbine’s blades.

A biohybrid, leaf-spring design of DNA origami functions as a pulsating nanoengine that exploits the DNA-templated RNA transcription mechanism while consuming nucleoside triphosphates as fuel. The nanoengine also drives a nanomechanical follower structure.

A DNA origami nanoturbine is designed as a rotary motor that draws power from an ion gradient or electrical potential across a solid-state nanopore. Single-molecule experiments demonstrate that the turbine can drive a DNA bundle into sustained unidirectional rotation, with the preferred rotation direction set by the chirality of the turbine.

DNA chirality allows it to act as an electrohydrodynamical turbine under the action of an electroosmotic flow when confined in nanopores.

A rod-shaped molecular motor constructed from DNA rolls in a straight line across an RNA-functionalized surface.