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Posts Tagged ‘Molecular Machinery’

Walking DNA Nanorobot

Posted in Drug Carrier Design, Drug Delivery Platform Technology, Materials Science & Engineering, Nanotechnology for Drug Delivery, tagged , , , on September 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Walking DNA Nanorobot

Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD

New research from California Institute of Technology headed by Anupama Thubagere and Lulu Qian built robots from DNA and programmed them to sort and deliver molecules to a specified location. These robots can potentially transform the drug delivery field to how body fights infections to how microscopic measurements are made. The dominant premise of DNA robots is that rather than creating molecular devices from scratch, we can use the power of molecular machinery by building microscopic-size robots and send them to places that are then impossible to reach, such as a cell or a hard-to-reach cancerous tumor. These robots demonstrated the ability to perform simple tasks, however this latest effort ramped up a path by programming DNA robots to perform a cargo‐sorting task and possibly many other tasks.

Each robot was built from a single-stranded DNA molecule of just 53 nucleotides equipped with “legs” for walking and “arms” for picking up objects. The robot are 20 nanometers tall and their walking strides measures six nanometers long, where one nanometer is a billionth of a meter. For the cargo, the researchers used two types of molecules, each being a distinct single-stranded piece of DNA. For the tests, the researchers placed the cargo onto a random location along the surface of a two-dimensional origami DNA test platform. The walking DNA robots moved in parallel along this surface, hunting for their cargo.

To see if a robot successfully picked up and dropped off the right cargo at the right location, the researchers used two fluorescent dyes to differentiate the molecules.

The researchers guess that each DNA robot took around 300 steps to complete its task, or roughly ten times more than in previous efforts. Though, more work is needed to figure out how these DNA robots perform under different environmental conditions. This new study suggests a worthwhile methodology for scientists to continue pursuing.

SOURCE

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6356/eaan6558

 

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