Related papers: Loose mechanochemical coupling of molecular motors

Cell is the structural and functional unit of life. This Resource Letter serves as a guide to the literature on nano-machines which drive not only intracellular movements, but also motility of the cell. These machines are usually proteins…

Movements of molecular motors on cytoskeletal filaments are described by directed walks on a line. Detachment from this line is allowed to occur with a small probability. Motion in the surrounding fluid is described by symmetric random…

Molecular motors convert chemical energy derived from the hydrolysis of ATP into mechanical energy. A well-studied model of a molecular motor is the flashing ratchet model. We show that this model exhibits a fluctuation relation known as…

Processive molecular motors take more-or-less uniformly sized steps, along spatially periodic tracks, mostly forwards but increasingly backwards under loads. Experimentally, the major steps can be resolved clearly within the noise but one…

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…

We study the model of a molecular switch comprised of a molecule with a soft vibrational degree of freedom coupled to metallic leads. In the presence of strong electron-ion interaction, different charge states of the molecule correspond to…

Electromechanical actuators exploit the Lorentz force law to convert electrical energy into rotational or linear mechanical energy. In these electromagnetically induced motions, the electrical current flows through wires that are rigid and…

We use stochastic computer simulations to study the transport of a spherical cargo particle along a microtubule-like track on a planar substrate by several kinesin-like processive motors. Our newly developed adhesive motor dynamics…

Collective operation of multiple engines to achieve a common objective is a vital step in the design of complex machines. Recent studies have reduced the length scales of engine design to micro and nanometers. While strategies to build…

Cell migration is a fundamental process involved in physiological phenomena such as the immune response and morphogenesis, but also in pathological processes, such as the development of tumor metastasis. These functions are effectively…

Molecular motors drive mechanical motions utilizing the free energy liberated from chemical reactions such as ATP hydrolysis. Although it is essential to know the efficiency of this free energy transduction, it has been a challenge due to…

The metabolic processes complexity is at the heart of energy conversion in living organisms and forms a huge obstacle to develop tractable thermodynamic metabolism models. By raising our analysis to a higher level of abstraction, we develop…

Chemically active droplets provide simple models for cell-like systems that can grow and divide. Such active droplet systems are driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium and turn over chemically, which corresponds to a simple metabolism.…

An expression for the energetic efficiency of a molecular motor is presented in terms of an effective temperature, which was defined based on the ratio of the correlation function to the susceptibility of its velocity. We also present a…

We investigate a model of a stochastic engine operating cyclically at constant bath temperature, which consists of an overdamped Brownian harmonic oscillator that plays the role of working substance and is elastically coupled to an active…

The motility of a cell can be triggered or inhibited not only by an applied force but also by a mechanically neutral force couple. This type of loading, represented by an applied stress and commonly interpreted as either squeezing or…

The bacterial flagellar motor plays a crucial role in both bacterial locomotion and chemotaxis. Recent experiments reveal that the switching dynamics of the motor depends on the motor rotation speed, and thus the motor torque,…

Chemically powered self-propelled colloids generate a motor force by converting locally a source of energy into directed motion, a process that has been explored both in experiments and in computational models. The use of active colloids as…

We propose a theory based on non-equilibrium thermodynamics to describe the mechanical behavior of an active polymer gel created by the inclusion of molecular motors in its solvent. When activated, these motors attach to the chains of the…

Biomolecular systems like molecular motors or pumps, transcription and translation machinery, and other enzymatic reactions can be described as Markov processes on a suitable network. We show quite generally that in a steady state the…