Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Molecular motors are natural (biological) or artificial molecular machines that are the essential agents of movement in living organisms. In general terms, a motor is a device that consumes energy in one form and converts it into motion or mechanical work ; for example, many protein -based molecular motors harness the chemical free energy ...
The term "Brownian motor" was originally invented by Swiss theoretical physicist Peter Hänggi in 1995. [3] The Brownian motor, like the phenomenon of Brownian motion that underpinned its underlying theory, was also named after 19th century Scottish botanist Robert Brown, who, while looking through a microscope at pollen of the plant Clarkia pulchella immersed in water, famously described the ...
The first example of an artificial molecular machine (AMM) was reported in 1994, featuring a rotaxane with a ring and two different possible binding sites. In 2016 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.
The prototype of a chemically driven rotary molecular motor by Kelly and co-workers. The motor by Kelly and co-workers is an elegant example of how chemical energy can be used to induce controlled, unidirectional rotational motion, a process which resembles the consumption of ATP in organisms in order to fuel numerous processes. However, it ...
Motor proteins are a class of molecular motors that can move along the cytoplasm of animal cells. They convert chemical energy into mechanical work by the hydrolysis of ATP. A good example is the muscle protein myosin which "motors" the contraction of muscle fibers in animals.
Many of these molecular motors are ubiquitous in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, although some, such as those involved with cytoskeletal elements or chromatin, are unique to eukaryotes. The motor protein prestin, [14] expressed in mammalian cochlear outer hair cells, produces mechanical amplification in the cochlea. It is a direct ...
A proposed branch of research is the integration of molecular motor proteins found in living cells into molecular motors implanted in artificial devices. Such a motor protein would be able to move a "cargo" within that device, via protein dynamics , similarly to how kinesin moves various molecules along tracks of microtubules inside cells.
Mechanochemistry (or mechanical chemistry) is the initiation of chemical reactions by mechanical phenomena. Mechanochemistry thus represents a fourth way to cause chemical reactions, complementing thermal reactions in fluids, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. Conventionally mechanochemistry focuses on the transformations of covalent bonds ...