Related papers: Synergic mechanism and fabrication target for bipe…
Artificial nanowalkers are inspired by biomolecular counterparts from living cells, but remain far from comparable to the latter in design principles. The walkers reported to date mostly rely on chemical mechanisms to gain a direction; they…
Biological functions in each animal cell depend on coordinated operations of a wide variety of molecular motors. Some of the these motors transport cargo to their respective destinations whereas some others are mobile workshops which…
A molecular motor is made of either a single macromolecule or a macromolecular complex. Just like their macroscopic counterparts, molecular motors "transduce" input energy into mechanical work. All the nano-motors considered here operate…
DNA nanostructures are made using synthetic DNA strands, the sequences of which are designed such that they will self-assemble into the desired form by hybridization of complementary domains. Various structures and devices have been…
The complexity of bipedal locomotion may be attributed to the difficulty in synchronizing joint movements while at the same time achieving high-level objectives such as walking in a particular direction. Artificial central pattern…
We use a two-state ratchet model to study the cooperative bidirectional motion of molecular motors on cytoskeletal tracks with randomly alternating polarities. Our model is based on a previously proposed model [Badoual et al., {\em Proc.…
Understanding the operation of biological molecular motors, nanoscale machines that transduce electrochemical energy into mechanical work, is enhanced by bottom-up strategies to synthesize novel motors.
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,…
A fundamental design rule that nature has developed for biological machines is the intimate correlation between motion and function. One class of biological machines is molecular motors in living cells, which directly convert chemical…
Human-created engines and evolutionarily optimized molecular motors exhibit sophisticated design in order to harvest chemical or thermal energy for generating unidirectional motion. The complexity of these motors makes their random…
Dynamic walking on bipedal robots has evolved from an idea in science fiction to a practical reality. This is due to continued progress in three key areas: a mathematical understanding of locomotion, the computational ability to encode this…
The remarkable athletic intelligence displayed by humans in complex dynamic movements such as dancing and gymnastics suggests that the balance mechanism in biological beings is decoupled from specific movement patterns. This decoupling…
The dynamics of molecular motors which occasionally detach from a heterogeneous track like DNA or RNA is considered. Motivated by recent single molecule experiments, we study a simple model for a motor moving along a disordered track using…
Molecular motors are macromolecular complexes which use some form of input energy to perform mechanical work. The filamentary tracks, on which these motors move, are made of either proteins (e.g., microtubules) or nucleic acids (DNA or…
Recent experiments reveal both passive subdiffusion of various nanoparticles and anomalous active transport of such particles by molecular motors in the molecularly crowded environment of living biological cells. Passive and active…
The development of rotary nanomotors is crucial for further advancing NEMS technology. In this work, we report innovative design, assembly, and rotation of ordered arrays of nanomotors. The nanomotors were bottom-up assembled from nanoscale…
Routinely navigating through an ever-changing and unsteady environment, and utilizing chemical energy, molecular motors transport the cell's crucial components, such as neurotransmitters and organelles. They generate force and pull cargo,…
To develop active materials that can efficiently respond to external stimuli with designed mechanical motions is one of the major obstacles that have hindered the realization of nanomachines and nanorobots. Here, we propose an innovative…
Micromotor and nanomotor particles are typically made using dense solid particles that can sediment or be trapped in confined flow environments. Creation of much larger motors should be possible if a very low-density system is used with…
Externally powered magnetic nanomotors are of particular interest due to the potential use for \emph{in vivo} biomedical applications. Here we develop a theory for dynamics and polarization of recently fabricated superparamagnetic chiral…