Related papers: Molecular motors: design, mechanism and control
A nanoscale-sized Stirling engine with an atomistic working fluid has been modeled using molecular dynamics simulation. The design includes heat exchangers based on thermostats, pistons attached to a flywheel under load, and a regenerator.…
Motor-driven intracellular transport of organelles, vesicles, and other molecular cargo is a highly collective process. An individual cargo is often pulled by a team of transport motors, with numbers ranging from only a few to several…
Molecular motors are single macromolecules that generate forces at the piconewton range and nanometer scale. They convert chemical energy into mechanical work by moving along filamentous structures. In this paper, we study the velocity of…
Biomolecular motors use free energy to drive a variety of cellular tasks, including the transport of cargo, such as vesicles and organelles. We find that the widely-used `constant-force' approximation for the effect of cargo on motor…
The activity of biological cells is primarily based on chemical reactions and typically modeled as a reaction-diffusion system. Cells are, however, highly crowded with macromolecules, including a variety of molecular machines such as…
Microscopic biological systems operate far from equilibrium, are subject to strong fluctuations, and are composed of many coupled components with interactions varying in nature and strength. Researchers are actively investigating the…
Molecular machines consist of either a single protein or a macromolecular complex composed of protein and RNA molecules. Just like their macroscopic counterparts, each of these nano-machines has an engine that "transduces" input energy into…
A molecular rotor mechanism is proposed to explain weak magnetic field effects in biology. Despite being nanoscale (1 nm), this rotor exhibits quantum superposition and interference. Analytical modeling shows its quantum dynamics are highly…
Micro/nano-scale propulsion has attracted considerable recent attention due to its promise for biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery. In this paper, we report on a new experimental design and theoretical modelling of…
In systems possessing spatial or dynamical symmetry breaking, Brownian motion combined with symmetric external input signals, deterministic or random, alike, can assist directed motion of particles at the submicron scales. In such cases,…
Molecular motors are in charge of almost every process in the life cycle of cells, such as protein synthesis, DNA replication, and cell locomotion, hence being of crucial importance for understanding the cellular dynamics. However, given…
The molecular machinery of life is largely created via self-organisation of individual molecules into functional assemblies. Minimal coarse-grained models, where a whole macromolecule is represented by a small number of particles, can be of…
Molecular motors convert chemical energy into mechanical work while operating in an environment dominated by Brownian motion. The aim of this paper is to explore the flow of energy between the molecular motors and its surroundings, in…
While molecular machines play an increasingly significant role in nanoscience research and applications, there remains a shortage of investigations and understanding of the molecular gear (cogwheel), which is an indispensable and…
Intracellular transport along microtubules or actin filaments, powered by molecular motors such as kinesins, dyneins or myosins, has been recently modeled using one-dimensional driven lattice gases. We discuss some generalizations of these…
The output of a motor is work, while the output of a clock is information. Here it is discussed how a molecular motor can produce both, work and information, depending on the load. If the ratio of the backward and forward stepping rates of…
We introduce a new approach to build microscopic engines on the atomic scale that move translationally or rotationally and can perform useful functions such as pulling of a cargo. Characteristic of these engines is the possibility to…
Molecular motors are found throughout the cells of the human body, and have many different and important roles. These micro-machines move along filament tracks, and have the ability to convert chemical energy into mechanical work that…
The motion of molecular motor is essential to the biophysical functioning of living cells. In principle, this motion can be regraded as a multiple chemical states process. In which, the molecular motor can jump between different chemical…
Cells are strongly out-of-equilibrium systems driven by continuous energy supply. They carry out many vital functions requiring active transport of various ingredients and organelles, some being small, others being large. The cytoskeleton,…