Related papers: ATP synthase: evolution, energetics, and membrane …
The effects of the evolution force are observable in nature at all structural levels ranging from small molecular systems to conversely enormous biospheric systems. However, the evolution force and work associated with formation of…
DNA helicases are molecular motors that use the energy from ATP hydrolysis to move along DNA, promoting the unwinding or rewinding of the double helix. Here, we use magnetic and optical tweezers to track the motion of three helicases, gp41,…
Protein conformational changes are activated processes essential for protein functions. Activation in a protein differs from activation in a small molecule in that it involves directed and systematic energy flows through preferred channels…
We propose a novel definition of life in terms of which its emergence in the universe is expected, and its ever-creative open-ended evolution is entailed by no law. Living organisms are Kantian Wholes that achieve Catalytic Closure,…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
Darwinian Theory depicts life as being overwhelmingly consumed by a fight for survival in a hostile environment. However, from a thermodynamic perspective, life is a dynamic, out of equilibrium process, stabilizing and coevolving in concert…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is now recognized as a common mechanism for regulating enzyme activity in cells. Insights from studies in cells are complemented by in vitro studies aimed at developing better understanding of mechanisms…
Glycerol titration distinguished from free water the local hydration shell involved in ATPase transition from active to inactive, with cooperativity for water n=16. Rat brain cortex: NE-stimulated and its basal AC in the absence of free…
Recently it has been discovered---contrary to expectations of physicists as well as biologists---that the energy transport during photosynthesis, from the chlorophyll pigment that captures the photon to the reaction centre where glucose is…
Proteins are large and complex molecular machines. In order to perform their function, most of them need energy, e.g. either in the form of a photon, like in the case of the visual pigment rhodopsin, or through the breaking of a chemical…
When a system is in equilibrium, external perturbations yield a time series of non-equilibrium distributions, and recent experimental techniques give access to the non-equilibrium data that may contain critical information. Jinwoo and…
The ABC (ATP Binding Cassette) transporter protein superfamily comprises a large number of ubiquitous and functionally versatile proteins conserved from archaea to humans. ABC transporters have a key role in many human diseases and also in…
Living cells provide a fluctuating, out-of-equilibrium environment in which genes must coordinate cellular function. DNA looping, which is a common means of regulating transcription, is very much a stochastic process; the loops arise from…
In higher organisms, all cells share the same genome, but every cell expresses only a limited and specific set of genes that defines the cell type. During cell division, not only the genome, but also the cell type is inherited by the…
Membrane Proteins (MPs) account for around 15-39% of the human proteome and assume a critical role in a vast set of cellular and physiological mechanisms, including molecular transport, nutrient uptake, toxin and waste product clearance,…
The life of a cell is governed by highly dynamical microscopic processes. Two notable examples are the diffusion of membrane receptors and the kinetics of transcription factors governing the rates of gene expression. Different fluorescence…
Phosphorylation, the enzyme-mediated addition of a phosphate group to a molecule, is a ubiquitous chemical mechanism in biology. Multisite phosphorylation, the addition of phosphate groups to multiple sites of a single molecule, may be…
Metabolic networks are complex systems that comprise hundreds of chemical reactions which synthesize biomass molecules from chemicals in an organism's environment. The metabolic network of any one organism is encoded by a metabolic…
Cells use biochemical networks to translate environmental information into intracellular responses. These responses can be highly dynamic, but how the information is encoded in these dynamics remains poorly understood. Here we investigate…
Oscillation is an important cellular process that regulates timing of different vital life cycles. However, in the noisy cellular environment, oscillations can be highly inaccurate due to phase fluctuations. It remains poorly understood how…