MAQ Magazine n. 13 / July 2019
A molecular machine, nanite, or nanomachine, is a molecular component that produces quasi-mechanical movements (output) in response to specific stimuli (input). In biology, macromolecular machines frequently perform tasks essential for life such as DNA replication and ATP synthesis. The expression is often more generally applied to molecules that simply mimic functions that occur at the macroscopic level. The term is also common in nanotechnology where a number of highly complex molecular machines have been proposed that are aimed at the goal of constructing a molecular assembler.
Kinesin walking on a microtubule is a molecular biological machine using protein domain dynamics on nanoscales
For the last several decades, chemists and physicists alike have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to miniaturize machines found in the macroscopic world. Molecular machines research is currently at the forefront with the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry being awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.
These are the molecular machines inside your body that make cell division possible. Animation by Drew Berry at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. http://wehi.tv
Every day in an adult human roughly 50-70 billion of your cells die. They may be damaged, stressed, or just plain old - this is normal, in fact it’s called programmed cell death.
To make up for that loss, right now, inside your body, billions of cells are dividing, creating new cells.
And cell division, also called mitosis, requires an army of tiny molecular machines.DNA is a good place to start - the double helix molecule that we always talk about.