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Motion Analysis Of Biotin Carboxylase-Driven Robotic Nano-Swimmers, Sima Hannani

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to experimentally validate the hypothesis that the enzyme biotin carboxylase (BC) can behave as a bimolecular motor and propel nano-scale particles in fluidic environments. This hypothesis was proposed in the M.S. thesis “Toward the Development of Biotin Carboxylase Driven Robotic Nano-swimmer” by Rachel Yates (Yates, 2012). In (Yates, 2012), the nano-particle (called a nano-swimmer) is a Janus particle with BC molecules attached to one hemisphere. The idea is that in the presence of its substrates (i.e., fuel) BC will cause individual nano-particles to undergo non-Brownian motion by virtue of its conformational change. In order …