Countless motor proteins responsible for gene expression and replication travel along DNA strands, carrying out fundamental biological processes. Michelle D. Wang, the James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor of the Physical Sciences and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in physics, looks into the power of these motor proteins to distort the DNA highway.
“Because of the helical nature of DNA, as a motor protein moves forward, it must rotate around the helical axis,” says Wang in this article by Cornell Research. “This rotational motion is intrinsic to the motor protein’s properties, and it causes the DNA to deform, to reconfigure."
