Molecular "Robot" Made out of DNA to Start, Move, Turn, and Stop While Following A
DNA Track

A team of scientists from Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of MIchigan, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have programmed an autonomous molecular "robot" made out of DNA to start, move, turn, and stop while following a DNA track.

The development could ultimately lead to molecular systems that might one day be used for medical therapeutic devices and molecular-scale reconfigurable robots-robots made of many simple units that can reposition or even rebuild themselves to accomplish different tasks. A paper describing the work appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.

The traditional view of a robot is that it is "a machine that senses its environment, makes a descision, and then does something- it acts," says Erik Winfree, associate Professor of coumputer science, computation and neural systems, and bioengineering at Caltech.

Milan N. Stojanovic, faculty member in the Division of Experimental Therapeutics at Columbia University, led the project and teamed up with Winfree and Hao Yan, Professor of chemistry and an expert in DNA nanotechnology, and with Nils G. Walter, professor of chemistry and director of the single Molecule Analysis in Real- Time (SMART) Canter at University of Machigan in Ann Arbor, for what became a modern-day self-assembly of like- minded scientists with the complementarty areas of expertise needed to tackle a tough problem.