Mechanical Catalysis on the Centimeter Scale

This section explains the design flow of the units described in figure S1. Once the prerequisites for the paths for the enzymatic action are determined, the design of the units is further constrained to represent the conformation change. We first designed the unit outline of S such that two combined units can represent a conformation change. The designed S, (SL and SS) can rotate through a relative angle of 90◦ (figure S1a), such that when two antiparallel embedded cylindrical magnets M1 and M2 attract and slide in the embedded paths decreasing the relative distance, the units change their contact facets, representing a conformation change (phase k2−2). Then we prolonged one of the paths on the left unit “backward” to realize phase k2−1, and then phase k1 (figure S1b). This process is accompanied with the determination of the edge outlines of SL and SS . Considering the formation of magnetic flux created by M1 and M2, which spreads symmetrically from M1 to M2, another E is embedded by extending the body of SL for autocatalytic purposes (figure S1c). The position was determined such that (1) it creates a reasonable size for the attractive region for a mobile E or I (ref. figure S1a), and (2) it is closer to SL than to SS , so that the E is naturally attracted to SL by the magnetic force, and at the same time prevents a mobile E from entering the 90◦–spanning region between SL and SS . Note that SS and SL maintain the configuration even without a docked E . At the end, a bumper, a hole, and a holder were added to SL such that the bumper prevents the sliding of SL and SS while the magnets are sliding, and the hole guides the drop and flip of M2 when a conformation change occurs (figure S1d). When the flip occurs, M2 connects to the bottom of M1 by turning upside-down, sandwiching the floors of SS and the holder of SL (flip-hold mechanism; see figure S5a and S5b for the detail flip motion).