Inside our cells, and those of the most well-known lifeforms, exist a variety of complex compounds known as “molecular motors.” These biological machines are essential for various types of movement in living systems, from the microscopic rearrangement or transport of proteins within a single cell to the macroscopic contraction of muscle tissues.

 .

At the crossroads between robotics and nanotechnology, a goal that is highly sought after is finding ways to leverage the action of these tiny molecular motors to perform more sizeable tasks in a controllable manner. However, achieving this goal will certainly be challenging.

 .

“So far, even though researchers have found ways to scale up the collective action of molecular motor networks to show macroscopic contraction, it is still difficult to integrate such networks efficiently into actual machines and generate forces large enough to actuate macroscale components,” explains Associate Professor Yuichi Hiratsuka from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.

 .

Fortunately, Dr. Hiratsuka, in collaboration with Associate Professor Takahiro Nitta from Gifu University and Professor Keisuke Morishima from Osaka University, both in Japan, have recently made remarkable progress in the quest to bridge the micro with the macro. In their latest study published in Nature Materials […]

Click here to view original web page at phys.org