When it comes to matching simplicity with staggering creative potential, DNA may hold the prize. Built from an alphabet of just four nucleic acids, DNA provides the floorplan from which all earthly life is constructed.

Through a process known as strand displacement, a tiny walking device composed of DNA moves across a surface in a cartwheeling motion. The new device performed this feat more rapidly than any DNA walker designed to date. Credit: Nature Nanotechnology/Nils Walter

But DNA’s remarkable versatility doesn’t end there. Researchers have managed to coax segments of DNA into performing a host of useful tricks. DNA sequences can form logical circuits for nanoelectronic applications. They have been used to perform sophisticated mathematical computations, like finding the optimal path between multiple cities. And DNA is the basis for a new breed of tiny robots and nanomachines. Measuring thousands of times smaller than a bacterium, such devices can carry out a multitude of tasks.

In new research, Hao Yan of Arizona State University and his colleagues describe an innovative DNA walker, capable of rapidly traversing a prepared track. Rather than slow, tentative steps across a surface, the DNA acrobat cartwheels head over heels, covering ground 10- to 100-fold faster than previous devices.

“It is exciting to see that DNA walkers can increase their speed significantly by optimizing DNA strand length and sequences, the collaborative effort really made this happen,” Yan said.

Yan is the Milton D. Glick Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at ASU and director of the Biodesign Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics.

The study was led by Nils G. Walter, Francis S. Collins Collegiate Professor of Chemistry, Biophysics & Biological Chemistry, founding director of the Single Molecule Analysis in Real-Time (SMART) Center and founding co-director of the Center for RNA Biomedicine at the University of Michigan, and his team, along with collaborators from the Wyss Institute, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard (all in Boston, Massachusetts).

“The trick was to make the walker go head over heels, which is so much faster than the hopping used before—just as you would see in a kung fu action movie where the hero speeds up by cartwheeling to catch the villain,” says Walter.

The improvements in speed and locomotion displayed by the new walker should encourage further innovations in the field of DNA nanotechnology.

The group’s findings appear in the advanced online issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Read full text here: Building Motors to Drive Nanorobots