Synthetic DNA walkers that are inspired by the walking behaviors of naturally occurring motor proteins have emerged into an important subfield of DNA nanotechnology. While early DNA walkers were designed to walk on one-dimensional (1D) DNA tracks, the development of DNA origami and DNA functionalized micro-/nanomaterials has enabled diverse 2D and 3D tracks. Random walking becomes possible in such platforms and such stochastic DNA walkers can be engineered with much-improved speed and processivity. The invention and improvement of diverse stochastic DNA walkers have made them ideal amplification platforms for analytical and diagnostic applications. In this feature article, we first review the development of DNA walkers with a historical aspect and then focus on the advances in stochastic DNA walkers. We finally elaborated our research efforts to design varying 3D stochastic DNA walkers for rapid and amplified detection of biologically important nucleic acids and proteins.
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