Biological application of multi-component nanowires in hybrid devices powered by F1-ATPase motors.

In this paper, construction of hybrid device by integrating nanowires with F(1)-ATPase motors is described. The nickel nanowires and multi-segment nanowires, including gold and nickel, were fabricated by electrochemical deposition in nanoporous templates. The nickel nanowires functionalized by biotinylated peptide can be assembled directly onto F(1)-ATPase motors to act as the propellers. If the multi-component nanowires, including gold and nickel, were selectively functionalized by the thiol group modified ssDNA and the synthetic peptide, respectively, the biotinylated F(1)-ATPase motors can be attached to the biotinylated peptide on nickel segment of the nanowires. Then, the multi-component nanowires can also be used as the propellers, and one may observe the rotations of the multi-component nanowires driven by F(1)-ATPase motors. Therefore, introduction of multiple segments along the length of a nanowire can lead to a variety of multiple chemical functionalities, which can be selectively bound to cells and special biomolecules. This method provides an insight for the construction of other hybrid devices with its controlling arrangement of different biomolecule on designed nanometer scale structures.