Engines at molecular scales

TL;DR

This paper explores how noise can facilitate transport at the molecular level, focusing on biological motors, their efficiency, and applications in nanotechnology and game theory.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the physical principles behind noise-assisted transport and the operation of molecular motors, highlighting recent advances and applications.

Findings

Noise enhances transport efficiency in molecular systems

Biological motors operate reliably despite environmental noise

Resonance phenomena improve transport coherence

Abstract

In recent literature there has been a lot of interest in the phenomena of noise induced transport in the absence of an average bias occurring in spatially periodic systems far from equilibrium. One of the main motivations in this area is to understand the mechanism behind the operation of biological motors at molecular scale. These molecular motors convert chemical energy available during the hydrolysis of ATP into mechanical motion to transport cargo and vesicles in living cells with very high reliability, adaptability and efficiency in a very noisy environment. The basic principle behind such a motion, namely the Brownian ratchet principle, has applications in nanotechnology as novel nanoparticle separation devices. Also, the mechanism of ratchet operation finds applications in game theory. Here, we briefly focus on the physical concepts underlying the constructive role of noise in assisting transport at a molecular level. The nature of particle currents, the energetic efficiency of these motors, the entropy production in these systems and the phenomenon of resonance/coherence are discussed.