Transcriptional control of DNA-based nanomachines

The construction of autonomous DNA-based nanomachines is an important challenge. To this end we have combined DNA tweezers with the transcription machinery of prokaryotic organisms and created a gene that codes for the production of an mRNA strand to bring about a conformational change in the tweezers. Gel electrophoresis and FRET experiments demonstrate that the transcription process successfully reads out the gene and automatically brings the machine to the desired state.