This DNA Switch Could Control Molecular Machines

Scientists have long dreamed of developing nanoscale machines, but building reliable mechanical components at the molecular scale has proved challenging. Researchers have now developed a DNA-based switch that can rapidly and repeatedly snap between two stable states, much like the components that underpin everyday electronics.

Ever since Richard Feynman’s visionary lecture “There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” researchers have been enamored with the idea of engineering at the scale of atoms and molecules. But manipulating matter at the nanoscale is easier said than done.

Individual molecules are in constant motion and continuously jostled about by the thermal energy of their surroundings. This makes it extremely difficult to position and assemble larger structures and undermines control of the mechanical motion of components.

This is particularly true for switches—key components in many mechanical and electronic devices you might want to build. Getting a tiny structure to hold one position, flip cleanly to another, and then stay there has so far been an unsolved problem.

But now, a team at the Technical University of Munich has created a switch made from folded strands of DNA that remains stable for up to an hour and flips in milliseconds on the application of a brief electric field. Crucially, the device was able to switch back and forth repeatedly with no degradation in performance.

“Individual devices sustain hundreds of thousands of switching cycles over several hours and remain functional for actuation over several days,” the researchers write in a paper in Science Robotics. “As a nanoscale electromechanical interface, our device enables applications in molecular information processing, optical nanodevices, and the dynamic control of chemical reactions.”

The device borrows a principle from standard engineering known as a snap-through mechanism, which rests in either of two states and only flips when pushed hard enough, a bit like a light switch.

Scaling the idea down to a few tens of nanometers meant designing rigid arms linked by flexible molecular hinges, so the structure settles into one of two configurations and does not flick between them on its own. The team relied on DNA origami to accomplish this, where a long strand of DNA is folded into custom 2D and 3D shapes using hundreds of shorter "staple" strands.

One of the two arms features a longer “extension arm” that acts as a lever to push the switch between configurations. DNA carries negative charge, so when an electric field is applied to the device, it pushes the arm hard enough to flip the switch. Left alone, the team estimates that the structure stays in its resting state for roughly six hours, and they observed no spontaneous flips while monitoring 70 switches for an hour.