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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 ...
Synthetic molecular motors are molecular machines capable of continuous directional rotation under an energy input. [2] Although the term "molecular motor" has traditionally referred to a naturally occurring protein that induces motion (via protein dynamics), some groups also use the term when referring to non-biological, non-peptide synthetic motors.
A number of theoretical models of the molecular motor protein kinesin have been proposed. [ 45 ] [ 46 ] [ 47 ] Many challenges are encountered in theoretical investigations given the remaining uncertainties about the roles of protein structures, the precise way energy from ATP is transformed into mechanical work, and the roles played by thermal ...
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 ...
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.
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.
Some inorganic solids dissociate - or crack - into molecular species heating or upon dissolving, e.g. Aluminium chloride. In such cases it is helpful to depict both the molecular and the nonmolecular forms. Some important chemical species cannot be easily represented with simple pictures, e.g. hydrochloric acid and non-stoichiometric compounds.
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 ...