Jenny Ross - Enhanced Diffusion via Enzymatic Catalysis

Enhanced Diffusion via Enzymatic Catalysis

Prof. Jenny Ross, Syracuse Physics

Biological systems appear to be able to rectify active processes into productive work using enzymes, assemblies of enzymes, and larger-scale machines made of those assemblies. We seek to recapitulate and understand the phenomena of biological self-organization from the molecular to the cellular scale in the hopes of someday recreating synthetic systems with the same astonishing properties. Recent work has demonstrated that enzymes performing their reactions diffuse faster than expected from Stokes-Einstein theory, called “enhanced diffusion”. This talk will focus on recent progress examining the ability of single enzymes to perform enhanced diffusion and the creation of nanoscale active matter by harnessing the enzymes to DNA-origami chassis. We approach this question in a systematic, bottom-up way building the complexity of the systems, directly imaging the systems with multi-color single molecule imaging and particle tracking. These systems will allow for the discovery of fundamental principles of designer, nanoscale active matter which can serve as the basis for hierarchical active materials.