Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors

Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors: From in vitro to in vivo Poster Abstracts

12-POS Board 12 Geometrical Theories of Optimization of Molecular Motors Alexandra K. Kasper , David A. Sivak. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.

Molecular motors, whether biological or synthetic, operate in highly fluctuating environments and are perpetually operating in a nonequilibrium state. As a result, equilibrium statistical mechanics is not a sufficient framework for discussing the operation and efficiency of molecular motors. In the pursuit of a general framework for these stochastic, nonequilibrium systems, significant theoretical research has focused on systems driven by time-dependent control parameters. Considering an operating motor as a system driven through state space by external controls is a promising framework for predicting average system response, identifying minimum- dissipation control parameter schedules, and potentially elucidating the design of minimally- dissipative systems for given external controls. The diverse collection of recent work spans from an analog of the quantum mechanical geometrical Berry phase that predicts the average number of rotations of F1-ATPase driven by a rotating magnetic field, to a geometric view of thermodynamic state space that predicts the dissipation associated with particular control schedules. I will highlight the current ideas in this area and provide an argument for unifying existing geometrical theories of molecular motors.

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