{"id":142672,"date":"2022-07-22T20:22:47","date_gmt":"2022-07-23T01:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/first-self-assembling-dna-nanomotor-runs-on-electricity"},"modified":"2022-07-22T20:22:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-23T01:22:47","slug":"first-self-assembling-dna-nanomotor-runs-on-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/first-self-assembling-dna-nanomotor-runs-on-electricity","title":{"rendered":"First self-assembling DNA nanomotor runs on electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed the world\u2019s first electric nanomotors made of DNA. The self-assembling structures can be activated by an electric charge to spin a ratcheting rotor arm.<\/p>\n

The tiny motor was made using a technique called DNA origami. Like its namesake papercraft, the method involves intricately folding strands of DNA into three-dimensional shapes, with past examples including virus traps<\/a>, immune-evading drug delivery systems<\/a>, and even microscopic Van Gogh replicas<\/a>. These structures are made by carefully selecting DNA sequences that will fold and attach to each other in certain ways, so researchers can add specific strands to a solution and let the DNA objects assemble themselves.<\/p>\n

For the new study, the team used this process to make a molecular motor out of DNA for the first time. The motor consists of a rotor arm measuring up to 500 nanometers (nm) long, which is mounted on a base about 40 nm high that\u2019s fixed to a glass plate. Wrapped around the tip of the base, just below the rotor, is a platform with several ratcheting obstacles built into its surface, which controls the direction that the rotor can spin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed the world\u2019s first electric nanomotors made of DNA. The self-assembling structures can be activated by an electric charge to spin a ratcheting rotor arm. The tiny motor was made using a technique called DNA origami. Like its namesake papercraft, the method involves intricately folding strands [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}