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Plausible view on the biological molecular energy machines
Author(s) -
Křemen Alexandr
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
biopolymers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.556
H-Index - 125
eISSN - 1097-0282
pISSN - 0006-3525
DOI - 10.1002/bip.360320503
Subject(s) - object (grammar) , space (punctuation) , divergence (linguistics) , molecular machine , energy flow , energy (signal processing) , sequence (biology) , set (abstract data type) , process (computing) , chemistry , task (project management) , non equilibrium thermodynamics , biological system , statistical physics , computer science , artificial intelligence , nanotechnology , physics , thermodynamics , quantum mechanics , philosophy , linguistics , materials science , biochemistry , biology , management , economics , programming language , operating system
A qualitative picture of operation modes of biological molecular energy machines is presented. It is suggested that there is mutual control between the flow of molecular energy stored in a biological molecular energy machine and the sequence of nonequilibrium conformational states through which the machine passes in doing work. If the structure of the conformational space is favorable, the set of trajectories in this space decomposes into two families, each of which accomplishes another task. This divergence of trajectories enables to distinguish molecular objects according to differences in interaction between the machine and the object, i.e., to perform a measurement on a molecular object and process the object according to the result of that measurement.