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May 13, 2022

Researchers invent world’s smallest biomechanical linkage

Posted by in categories: biological, chemistry, engineering

Researchers at Princeton University have built the world’s smallest mechanically interlocked biological structure, a deceptively simple two-ring chain made from tiny strands of amino acids called peptides.

In a published August 23 in Nature Chemistry, the team detailed a library of such structures made in their lab—two interlocked rings, a ring on a dumbbell, a daisy chain and an interlocked double lasso—each around one billionth of a meter in size. The study also demonstrates that some of these structures can toggle between at least two shapes, laying the groundwork for a biomolecular switch.

“We’ve been able to build a bunch of structures that no one’s been able to build before,” said A. James Link, professor of chemical and , the study’s principal investigator. “These are the smallest threaded or interlocking structures you can make out of peptides.”

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