Biomod/2013/Komaba/Design

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Cylinder

The cylinder is put in the center of the motor as an axis supporting the rotation. The material DNA is formed into a cylindrical shape using DNA Origami technology. It was designed using cadnano software, which "simplifies and enhances the process of designing three-dimensional DNA origami nanostructures".(Figure 1)

In order to bind footing DNAs on its surface spirally, the cylinder has specific DNA sequences. The footing lane structure enables DNA Spider to orbit the cylinder. In fact, this footing lane has a double helix structure and two spiders can walk on the cylinder. In addition, the starting points of spiders are marked with DNA, which make easy to observe the direction of spiders' walk.

The diameter of the cylinder is 25.4 mm and height is 43.5 mm. This is calculated on the assumptions that the cylinder can be observed with an Atomic Force Microscope and that the intervals between the footing lanes are wide enough for spiders not to jump it.(Figure 2)

[Figure 1:cadnanoのデータ][Figure 2:シリンダーの絵]

DNA Spider

The sources of power in rotational motion is DNA Spiders. DNA Spider consists of three DNA Walker which move on the footing by taking strands after another with DNAzyme. As they orbit the cylinder, their rotational movement is transmitted to DNA Ring.

Rotary Ring

It is the DNA ring part that actually rotates. It has shape like the side surface of a disk, and is also composed with DNA Origami technology. 10mer staple strand for connecting DNA Spider is attached on the inner side of the Ring. The diameter of the ring is 50.9 NM, and so it can hold the cylinder and spiders in the inside of the ring. The thickness of ring is 10.9 nm in consideration of AFM visibility.

Cylinder Motor (Combination of above parts)

The motor is realized by assembling above three parts: Cylinder, Spider, Ring. Unlike motors in electrical work, rotary parts of our motor are outer ones and the central cylinder is fixed.

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