Mechanism of “Biomolecular Machines”

Many biomolecules or biomolecular complexes have been referred to as “biomolecular machines” because they carry out the important machine-like functions of energy and signal transductions. Unlike macroscopic machines, these biomolecular systems can achieve remarkable efficiency in energy transduction and sensitivity/robustness in signal transduction. It’s a fascinating subject to figure out the microscopic properties of these systems that dictate their unique functional characteristics.

Currently, the specific systems we are interested in include biomolecular motors, pumps and sensory ion channels. Since large-scale structural/allosteric transitions are implicated in many of these systems, developing effective computational methods & strategies (e.g., proper coarse-graining) for understanding the mechanism of such transitions in both model and realistic systems is an important component of our research.

For more information, read our papers and image gallery…