Physical Society Colloquium

Mechanical magnification of single-molecule motion: leveraging DNA nanotechnology to visible lengths

Deborah Fygenson

Department of Physics
UC Santa Barbara

Sub-cellular biology is full of naturally occurring machines whose design principles elude us even as we are increasingly able to characterize their structure-function relationships. This is, perhaps, because natural machines are so long evolved as to be sophisticated and subtle combinations of whatever simple (i.e., elemental) machines exist in the watery world of molecular biology. To a modern Archimedes interested in identifying the simple macromolecular machines, DNA nanotechnology is uniquely enabling. This talk will describe the design, construction, and testing of a sub-cellular-sized DNA lever, demonstrate its utility for single-molecule studies and discuss the implications for man-made bio-machinery.