Recovery of state-specific potential of molecular motor from single-molecule trajectory

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to determine the state-specific potential profiles of molecular motors from single-molecule trajectories, revealing insights into their energetics and mechanochemical coupling, exemplified on F1-ATPase.

Contribution

The authors developed a novel approach to extract state-specific potentials from trajectory data, enabling detailed analysis of molecular motor energetics.

Findings

Position-dependent state transitions are crucial for F1-ATPase efficiency.

The method provides insights into mechanochemical coupling and free-energy transduction.

Potential profiles for each chemical state were successfully reconstructed.

Abstract

We have developed a novel method to evaluate the potential profile of a molecular motor at each chemical state from only the probe's trajectory and applied it to a rotary molecular motor F$_1$-ATPase. By using this method, we could also obtain the information regarding the mechanochemical coupling and energetics. We demonstrate that the position-dependent transition of the chemical states is the key feature for the highly efficient free-energy transduction by F$_1$-ATPase.