Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Molecular motors are natural (biological) or artificial molecular machines that are the essential agents of movement in living organisms. In general terms, a motor is a device that consumes energy in one form and converts it into motion or mechanical work ; for example, many protein -based molecular motors harness the chemical free energy ...
The prototype of a chemically driven rotary molecular motor by Kelly and co-workers. The motor by Kelly and co-workers is an elegant example of how chemical energy can be used to induce controlled, unidirectional rotational motion, a process which resembles the consumption of ATP in organisms in order to fuel numerous processes. However, it ...
The first example of an artificial molecular machine (a switchable molecular shuttle). The positively charged ring (blue) is initially positioned over the benzidine unit (green), but shifts to the biphenol unit (red) when the benzidine gets protonated (purple) as a result of electrochemical oxidation or lowering of the pH .
Many of these molecular motors are ubiquitous in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, although some, such as those involved with cytoskeletal elements or chromatin, are unique to eukaryotes. The motor protein prestin, [14] expressed in mammalian cochlear outer hair cells, produces mechanical amplification in the cochlea. It is a direct ...
A proposed branch of research is the integration of molecular motor proteins found in living cells into molecular motors implanted in artificial devices. Such a motor protein would be able to move a "cargo" within that device, via protein dynamics , similarly to how kinesin moves various molecules along tracks of microtubules inside cells.
In general terms, a motor is a device that consumes energy in one form and converts it into motion or mechanical work; for example, many protein-based molecular motors harness the chemical free energy released by the hydrolysis of ATP in order to perform mechanical work. [10]
Single-molecule motors have been demonstrated before. These motors were either powered by chemical reactions [5] or by light. [6] This is the first experimental demonstration of electrical energy successfully coupling to directed molecular rotation. [3] [7]
The term “Brownian motor” was originally invented by Swiss theoretical physicist Peter Hänggi in 1995. [3] The Brownian motor, like the phenomenon of Brownian motion that underpinned its underlying theory, was also named after 19th century Scottish botanist Robert Brown, who, while looking through a microscope at pollen of the plant Clarkia pulchella immersed in water, famously described ...