A synthetic DNA motor that transports nanoparticles along carbon nanotubes.

Intracellular protein motors have evolved to perform specific tasks critical to the function of cells such as intracellular trafficking and cell division. Kinesin and dynein motors, for example, transport cargoes in living cells by walking along microtubules powered by adenosine triphosphate hydrolysis. These motors can make discrete 8 nm centre-of-mass steps and can travel over 1 µm by changing their conformations during the course of adenosine triphosphate binding, hydrolysis and product release. Inspired by such biological machines, synthetic analogues have been developed including self-assembled DNA walkers that can make stepwise movements on RNA/DNA substrates or can function as programmable assembly lines. Here, we show that motors based on RNA-cleaving DNA enzymes can transport nanoparticle cargoes-CdS nanocrystals in this case-along single-walled carbon nanotubes. Our motors extract chemical energy from RNA molecules decorated on the nanotubes and use that energy to fuel autonomous, processive walking through a series of conformational changes along the one-dimensional track. The walking is controllable and adapts to changes in the local environment, which allows us to remotely direct 'go' and 'stop' actions. The translocation of individual motors can be visualized in real time using the visible fluorescence of the cargo nanoparticle and the near-infared emission of the carbon-nanotube track. We observed unidirectional movements of the molecular motors over 3 µm with a translocation velocity on the order of 1 nm min(-1) under our experimental conditions.

Understanding oligonucleotide-templated nanocrystals: growth mechanisms and surface properties.

We describe studies of nanoparticle synthesis using oligonucleotides as capping ligands. The oligonucleotides nucleate, grow, and stabilize near-infrared fluorescent, approximately uniform PbS nanocrystals in an aqueous environment. The properties of the resulting particles strongly depend upon the sequences as well as synthesis conditions. Fourier Transform infrared measurements suggest that functional groups on the nucleobases such as carbonyl and amine moieties are responsible for surface passivation, while the phosphate backbone is strained to accommodate nucleobase bonding, preventing irreversible aggregation and thereby stabilizing the colloids. Our theoretical model indicates that oligonucleotide-mediated particle growth relies on the chemical reactivity of the oligonucleotide ligands that saturate dangling bonds of growing clusters, and favorable sequences are those that have the highest surface reactivity with growing particles. The oligonucleotide template approach is facile and versatile, offering a route to produce a range of material compositions for other chalcogenide semiconductor quantum dots and metal oxide nanoparticles.

Optical nanosensor architecture for cell-signaling molecules using DNA aptamer-coated carbon nanotubes.

We report a novel optical biosensor platform using near-infrared fluorescent single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) functionalized with target-recognizing aptamer DNA for noninvasively detecting cell-signaling molecules in real time. Photoluminescence (PL) emission of aptamer-coated SWNTs is modulated upon selectively binding to target molecules, which is exploited to detect insulin using an insulin-binding aptamer (IBA) as a molecular recognition element. We find that nanotube PL quenches upon insulin recognition via a photoinduced charge transfer mechanism with a quenching rate of k(q) = 5.85 × 10(14) M(-1) s(-1) and a diffusion-reaction rate of k(r) = 0.129 s(-1). Circular dichroism spectra reveal for the first time that IBA strands retain a four-stranded, parallel guanine quadruplex conformation on the nanotubes, ensuring target selectivity. We demonstrate that these IBA-functionalized SWNT sensors incorporated in a collagen extracellular matrix (ECM) can be regenerated by removing bound analytes through enzymatic proteolysis. As proof-of-concept, we show that the SWNT sensors embedded in the ECM promptly detect insulin secreted by cultured pancreatic INS-1 cells stimulated by glucose influx and report a gradient contour of insulin secretion profile. This novel design enables new types of label-free assays and noninvasive, in situ, real-time detection schemes for cell-signaling molecules.