Open AccessEngineering molecular machines
Author(s) -
Burak Erman
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
new journal of physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.584
H-Index - 190
ISSN - 1367-2630
DOI - 10.1088/1367-2630/18/4/041002
Subject(s) - molecular motor , molecular machine , physics , function (biology) , work (physics) , molecular dynamics , range (aeronautics) , atp hydrolysis , energy (signal processing) , thermal , architecture , molecular model , molecular engineering , biological system , nanotechnology , thermodynamics , quantum mechanics , chemistry , aerospace engineering , biology , enzyme , stereochemistry , materials science , art , atpase , nuclear magnetic resonance , evolutionary biology , engineering , visual arts
Biological molecular motors use chemical energy, mostly in the form of ATP hydrolysis, and convert it to mechanical energy. Correlated thermal fluctuations are essential for the function of a molecular machine and it is the hydrolysis of ATP that modifies the correlated fluctuations of the system. Correlations are consequences of the molecular architecture of the protein. The idea that synthetic molecular machines may be constructed by designing the proper molecular architecture is challenging. In their paper, Sarkar et al (2016 New J. Phys. 18 043006) propose a synthetic molecular motor based on the coarse grained elastic network model of proteins and show by numerical simulations that motor function is realized, ranging from deterministic to thermal, depending on temperature. This work opens up a new range of possibilities of molecular architecture based engine design