Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors

Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors: From in vitro to in vivo Friday Speaker Abstracts

Efficient Molecular-scale Energy Transmission David A. Sivak . Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.

Given the centrality of energy transmission in the function of molecular motors, it seems plausible that evolution has sculpted these rapid-turnover machines to efficiently transmit energy in their natural contexts, where stochastic fluctuations are large and nonequilibrium driving forces are strong. But what are the physical limits on such nonequilibrium efficiency? And what machine designs would actually achieve these limits? Toward a systematic picture of efficient stochastic nonequilibrium energy transmission, I address two related fundamental questions in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics: How do we predict the response of molecular-scale soft- matter systems to rapid nonequilibrium driving? And how do we identify the driving that most efficiently (yet rapidly) carries such a noisy system from one state to another? These abstract theoretical considerations have immediate consequences for the design of single-molecule biophysical experiments and molecular simulations, and nontrivial yet intuitive implications for the design principles of molecular-scale energy transmission out of equilibrium, which I illustrate through application to simple model systems.

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