BSC-1005 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Brownian Motion, Molecular Motor, Fuel
15 Nov 2016
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Motor is embedded within the cell membranes of microorganisms, where serves the same purpose of a regular motor on a boat. Motor consists of twenty different protein parts which self-assemble into two different lipid membranes. Dna contains information much as a computer hard drive does, and ribonucleic acid (rna) is comparable to the function of random access memory and other functions comparable to that of a modern computer. Biological machines have parts so small that they operate at kinetic energies below the thermal energy of the environment. Brownian motion: thermally-driven movement at the molecular level caused by bombardment from neighboring atoms and molecules. Molecular fuel used to drive biomolecular machines is not used to generate directed kinetic energy like for macroscopic machines, but rather to direct thermal energy in a useful way. Generally speaking, standard chemical fuel for biological function is the molecule adenosine triphosphate (atp), which reacts with water to produce adenosine diphosphate (adp) and useable energy.
