Dimerization and oligomerization of DNA-assembled building blocks for controlled multi-motion in high-order architectures

In living organisms, proteins are organized prevalently through a self-association mechanism to form dimers and oligomers, which often confer new functions at the intermolecular interfaces. Despite the progress on DNA-assembled artificial systems, endeavors have been largely paid to achieve monomeric nanostructures that mimic motor proteins for a single type of motion. Here, we demonstrate a DNA-assembled building block with rotary and walking modules, which can introduce new motion through dimerization and oligomerization. The building block is a chiral system, comprising two interacting gold nanorods to perform rotation and walking, respectively. Through dimerization, two building blocks can form a dimer to yield coordinated sliding. Further oligomerization leads to higher-order structures, containing alternating rotation and sliding dimer interfaces to impose structural twisting. Our hierarchical assembly scheme offers a design blueprint to construct DNA-assembled advanced architectures with high degrees of freedom to tailor the optical responses and regulate multi-motion on the nanoscale.

Switching Cellular Swirling Upon One-Way Torsional Drive

In understanding how a radially symmetrical actin cytoskeleton spontaneously evolves into a chiral system, here we construct a torsional clutch-filament model for one radial fiber. The model analysis indicates that when actin filaments in growth tend to actively drive the radial fiber to only rotate counter-clockwise, certain amount of passive elastic energy also builds up within the radial fiber upon filament growth, the release of which tends to drive it to rotate clockwise. The competition between these two sources would eventually determine the cellular swirling direction, which can be counter-clockwise or clockwise. The model prediction is in consistency with recent experimental findings. This work provides understanding into how the cellular chirality can be modulated by varied molecular components associated with the cytoskeleton.

The effects of molecular structure and functional group of a rodlike Schiff base mesogen on blue phase stabilization in a chiral system

A wider blue phase (BP) range can be induced easily when two difluoro substituted and racemic rodlike Schiff base mesogens are doped with the appropriate concentration of chiral dopants S811 or ISO(6OBA)2.

Two Faces of Hydrogen in Yttrium Hydroxyhydride: Y2H3O(OH) – a New Inorganic Chiral System with Hydridic and Protonic Hydrogens

Design of inorganic compounds containing different anions attracts a lot of attention because it affords a great opportunity to develop new functionality across the whole range of material properties. Based on the results of structure-modeling studies of a mixed-anion system, we predicted novel derivatives of oxyhydrides – chiral hydroxyhydrides M₂H₃O(OH) (M = Y, Sc, La, and Gd) that are characterized by the coexistence of three anionic species, H^–, O2^–, and OH^– inside the crystal lattice. The materials demonstrate a specific charge ordering, which is connected with the chiral organization of atoms where both the metal cations and the anions are standing in positions that form helical curves spreading along the tetragonal axis. Moreover, the twisting of the H^– and H⁺ sites gives rise to their linking via strong dihydrogen bonds. Unusual structural, electron and optical features caused by the P4₁ crystal structure have been investigated in the Y₂H₃O(OH) comprehensive case study.

Two Faces of Hydrogen in Yttrium Hydroxyhydride: Y2H3O(OH) – a New Inorganic Chiral System with Hydridic and Protonic Hydrogens

Design of inorganic compounds containing different anions attracts a lot of attention because it affords a great opportunity to develop new functionality across the whole range of material properties. Based on the results of structure-modeling studies of a mixed-anion system, we predicted novel derivatives of oxyhydrides – chiral hydroxyhydrides M₂H₃O(OH) (M = Y, Sc, La, and Gd) that are characterized by the coexistence of three anionic species, H^–, O2^–, and OH^– inside the crystal lattice. The materials demonstrate a specific charge ordering, which is connected with the chiral organization of atoms where both the metal cations and the anions are standing in positions that form helical curves spreading along the tetragonal axis. Moreover, the twisting of the H^– and H⁺ sites gives rise to their linking via strong dihydrogen bonds. Unusual structural, electron and optical features caused by the P4₁ crystal structure have been investigated in the Y₂H₃O(OH) comprehensive case study.