Description of Research Area

Relationship between Nonequilibrium Fluctuation and Free Energy Transduction by F1-ATPase

Research Subject

Tiny biological molecular motor can autonomously couple chemical reaction with mechanical motion to transform free energy of the reaction to mechanical energy and vice versa. We have demonstrated that F1-ATPase, a rotational molecular motor, has very high energy transduction efficiency. However, we have not understood the mechanism of this high performance. In this study, we will figure out the conditions in which the molecular motor can achieve high efficiency as well as low efficiency so that we may shed light on the essential mechanism for the high performance. Experimental approach includes the measurement of the stall torque, analysis by Harada-Sasa equality, estimation of the rotational potential to investigate the mechanism by which local conformational change in the motor protein leads energy flow in a specific degree of freedom. In addition, we would like to understand the autonomy in relation to the information thermodynamics.