A tunable autonomous RNA-fueled micro-engine

a-tunable-autonomous-rna-fueled-micro-engine
A tunable autonomous RNA-fueled micro-engine

Data availability

The data supporting the findings of the study are available in the article and its Supplementary Information. All data are available from the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided with this paper. Source data is available for Figs. 2B–C, 3B–G, 4 and 5C in the associated source data file. Uncropped original gel images for Supplementary Figs. 3 and 4 are also included. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The code used for particle tracking is based on the publicly available Trackpy package (https://github.com/soft-matter/trackpy). The custom Python scripts developed for kinetic analysis, including double-exponential weighted fitting and model simulations, are available in a public GitHub repository (https://github.com/kw2556nyu/A_Tunable_Autonomous_RNA_Fueled_Micro_Engine_Analysis_Code.git) and archived with the permanent identifier https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18173464. The analysis relies on standard open-source libraries (NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib) as specified in the repository documentation.

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Acknowledgements

This research received primary support from the U.S. Department of Energy under Award DE-SC0007991 (P.M.C., N.S., R.S., K.W.), which covered project conception, planning, and data analysis. The experimental implementations were supported by DOE Award DE-SC0020971 (K.W.). Computational modeling efforts were funded by the National Science Foundation through the NSF-BSF Organization Far From Equilibrium Program (GRANT NO 2414721) and the ISS: GOALI initiative (NSF Grant No. 11832291) (B.G., W.C.). Early-stage design efforts were supported by the Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Sciences (CBES), an Energy Frontier Research Center sponsored by the U.S. DOE Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (Award DE-SC0000989) (G.Z.). Additional funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research (ONR Grant N000141912596) and NSF CCF-2106790 (R.S., N.C.S.), and P.M.C. acknowledges support from the Simons Foundation (Award No. 7200138).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Kun Wang, Wenjun Chen, Buming Guo, Heng Ni, Lei Zhang & Paul M. Chaikin

  2. Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Qiuyan Huang, Ruojie Sha & Nadrian C. Seeman

  3. Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, USA

    Guolong Zhu & Melanie Perez

Authors

  1. Kun Wang
  2. Wenjun Chen
  3. Buming Guo
  4. Qiuyan Huang
  5. Guolong Zhu
  6. Heng Ni
  7. Lei Zhang
  8. Melanie Perez
  9. Ruojie Sha
  10. Nadrian C. Seeman
  11. Paul M. Chaikin

Contributions

Project conceptualization was led by P.M.C., N.C.S., R.S., and K.W. Sample fabrication and preparation were performed by K.W. Experimental procedures and data analysis were conducted by K.W., W.C., G.Z., Q.H., B.G., P.M.C., and N.C.S.; Overall project oversight and coordination were carried out by P.M.C. and N.C.S. The initial manuscript draft was prepared by P.M.C. and K.W. The revision experiments were conducted by G.Z., M.P., and L.Z.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kun Wang or Paul M. Chaikin.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Communications thanks Khalid Salaita, Luona Zhang, and Ryota Iino for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.

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Wang, K., Chen, W., Guo, B. et al. A tunable autonomous RNA-fueled micro-engine. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69521-x

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