Web Release Date: February 10,
Single Molecule Nanometronome
and
Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology and Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Urbana, Illinois 61801
Received December 18, 2005
Revised January 30, 2006
Abstract:
We constructed a DNA-based nanomechanical device called the nanometronome. Our device is made by introducing complementary single-stranded overhangs at the two arms of the DNA four-way junction. The ticking rates of this stochastic metronome depend on ion concentrations and can be changed by a set of DNA-based switches to deactivate/reactivate the sticky end. Since the device displays clearly distinguishable responses even with a single base pair difference, it may lead to a single molecule sensor of minute sequence differences of a target DNA.
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