DNA Teaches Lifeless Matter Some New Moves
Living things move on their own. Bacteria swim in corkscrews, sperm cells beat their tails towards an egg, and molecules shuttle around inside every cell. Behind much of this motion is "active matter" — material whose parts act like tiny motors, burning chemical fuel and turning it into movement.
Now scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have taught lifeless material to do something new: follow a genetic programme. In two studies published on 9 November 2026, in Nature Materials and Nature Physics, researchers in Dr Alexandra Tayar's lab created two kinds of artificial active matter. One performs tasks and changes shape according to instructions written in DNA; the other shapes its own motion through the self-organisation of DNA strands. Together, they point towards materials that can be genetically programmed — with possible uses from soft robots to targeted medicines.
A material that reads its own genes
The first study asked a simple question: could artificial matter be given a genetic programme that lets it produce the molecular motors controlling its own activity? The team, led by doctoral student Rochelle Silverman and staff scientist Dr Erez Zerbib, working with Professor Vincent Noireaux of the University of Minnesota, embedded DNA and a gene-expression system inside a network of microtubules — the tiny tubes that form part of a cell's skeleton.
Once the DNA was in place, the material began producing its own motor proteins. As the motors built up, the network "came to life": the tubes began to move, organise into growing protrusions, and eventually break into bundles that swirled in small vortices for hours. By changing the concentration of the gene, the researchers could decide when the material would start moving, how fast it would move, and how quickly it changed between states. And by 3D-printing microscopic channels and ridges around it, they could control where the protrusions formed.
Then they put the genetic control to work. "We programmed the material to move briefly and then come to a stop," Silverman explains. They added a gene for a "bridging protein" — a kind of molecular Velcro that pulls neighbouring tubes together. At first this helped the motors grip and set the material moving, but the friction between the tubes quickly brought it to a halt. In another version, they programmed bursts of movement at regular intervals, using a protein that switches off motor production after a set time, with all the proteins rapidly broken down to make way for the next pulse.
"We turned familiar biological variables, such as the rate of gene expression or a genetic feedback loop, into physical variables that can be used to predict and design the properties of artificial materials," Tayar says.
A heartbeat made of DNA
The second study solved a deeper mystery: how do countless tiny motors produce large-scale, coordinated motion? The team, led by doctoral students Maya Levanon and Noa Goldberg, added long DNA strands to an active material and watched what happened. At first the flow was a jumble of small, randomly moving vortices. But after about an hour, the motion became rhythmic and synchronised, switching every few minutes between clockwise and anticlockwise rotation.
The explanation is elegant. As the material flows in one direction, it stretches the tangled DNA network for about ten minutes, until the network reaches its limit — then it contracts, sweeping the material along in the opposite direction. The DNA must be long enough to physically bridge neighbouring vortices for the stable, synchronised motion to appear. As the model predicted, the size of the millimetre-scale oscillations depended only on the size of the container, while their speed was set by the concentration of motors.
This matters beyond the laboratory. "In our bodies, active matter encounters long polymers every day," Tayar points out. "The viscous mucus lining the airways and reproductive organs is rich in polymers, and many tiny 'swimmers' move through it, including bacteria, drugs and sperm cells on their way to the egg." The findings suggest these giant molecular chains may actually synchronise motion in nature and make it more efficient.
For students, this is biology, physics and engineering in one story: the same DNA that carries the instructions for life can now be used to write instructions for a material — telling it when to move, when to stop, and when to beat in time.
If your child is fascinated by DNA, cells or how living things move, a first lesson in biology can start with this material that reads its own genes. Book your first lesson
Sources:
- Weizmann Institute of Science, "DNA Teaches Matter Some New Moves", 9 November 2026: https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/dna-teaches-matter-some-new-moves/
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