Berlin 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 43: Membranes and Vesicles I (joint session BP/CPP)
CPP 43.9: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 14. März 2018, 12:00–12:15, H 1028
Outperforming nature: synthetic enzyme built from DNA flips lipids of biological membranes at record rates — •Alexander Ohmann1, Chen-Yu Li2, Christopher Maffeo2, Kareem Al Nahas1, Kevin N. Baumann1, Kerstin Göpfrich1, Jejoong Yoo2, Ulrich F. Keyser1, and Aleksei Aksimentiev2 — 1Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK — 2University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
Mimicking enzyme function and increasing performance of naturally evolved proteins is one of the most challenging and intriguing aims of nanoscience. Here, we employ DNA nanotechnology to design a synthetic enzyme that substantially outperforms its biological archetypes. Consisting of only eight strands, our DNA nanostructure spontaneously inserts into biological membranes by forming a toroidal pore that connects the membrane’s inner and outer leaflets. The membrane insertion catalyzes spontaneous transport of lipid molecules between the bilayer leaflets, rapidly equilibrating the lipid composition. Through a combination of microscopic simulations and single-molecule experiments we find the lipid transport rate catalyzed by the DNA nanostructure to exceed 107 molecules per second, which is three orders of magnitude higher than the rate of lipid transport catalyzed by biological enzymes. Furthermore, we show that our DNA-based enzyme can control the composition of human cell membranes, which opens new avenues for applications of membrane-interacting DNA systems in medicine.