Transducing chemical energy through catalysis by an artificial molecular motor.

Cells display a range of mechanical activities generated by motor proteins powered through catalysis. This raises the fundamental question of how the acceleration of a chemical reaction can enable the energy released from that reaction to be transduced (and, consequently, work to be done) by a molecular catalyst. Here we demonstrate the molecular-level transduction of chemical energy to mechanical force in the form of the powered contraction and powered re-expansion of a cross-linked polymer gel driven by the directional rotation of artificial catalysis-driven molecular motors.

Next-generation variant exon screening: Moving forward in routine genetic disease investigations.

Purpose: Patients with genetic diseases often seek testing to reach a firm diagnosis. Based on clinical phenotypes, exome sequencing for small-nucleotide variations or array-based methods for copy-number variations (CNVs) are commonly offered to identify the underlying causative genetic variants. In this study, we investigated whether data from a standard ES test could be used to additionally identify pathogenic CNVs and increase diagnostic yield.

Active template synthesis.

The active template synthesis of mechanically interlocked molecular architectures exploits the dual ability of various structural elements (metals or, in the case of metal-free active template synthesis, particular arrangements of functional groups) to serve as both a template for the organisation of building blocks and as a catalyst to facilitate the formation of covalent bonds between them. This enables the entwined or threaded intermediate structure to be covalently captured under kinetic control. Unlike classical passive template synthesis, the intercomponent interactions transiently used to promote the assembly typically do not 'live on' in the interlocked product, meaning that active template synthesis can be traceless and used for constructing mechanically interlocked molecules that do not feature strong binding interactions between the components.