DNA Walking Devices - DNA Nanotechnology: From Structure to Function - page 255

Chapter 12
DNA Walking Devices

Jie Chao and Chunhai Fan

Abstract Since the concept of structural DNA nanotechnology was laid out early
in 1980s, followed by the fundamental steps in programming and engineering DNA
nanostructures and later the invention of the DNA origami technique, the field of
structural DNA nanotechnology has undergone tremendous development. Taking
advantage of the sequence specificity and the resulting spatial addressability of DNA
nanostructures, many DNA nanoarchitectures have been used for the organization
of heteroelements such as proteins and nanoparticles and for the functionalization to
mimic dynamic devices such as scissors and gears. Among these structures, DNA
walking devices were the most complicated ones that could combine numbers of
functions to realize the signal transduction. In this chapter, we would focus on the
discussion of the walking style and the trigger and the functions of these differential
DNA walking devices.

Keywords DNA walker • DNA motor • DNA origami • DNA i-motif

12.1 Introduction

Since Seeman assembled the immobile nucleic acid junction in 1983 [ 1 ], numerous
DNA tiles (DX, TX, PX, etc.) [ 2 - 4 ] and origami [ 5 ] with different shapes have
been designed. These are all in static state. Since DNA molecules have special
chemical and physical characters and seem easy to control, could people do some
nanodevices with functions based on that? DNA tweezers, demonstrated states of its
open or close controlled by “fuel” and “anti-fuel” strands [ 6 ], answered the question
positively. After that, numbers of dynamic devices come out, which could be

J. Chao • C. Fan ( )
Laboratory of Physical Biology, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy
of Science, Shanghai 201800, China
e-mail: [e-mail]