Nature's Nanomachines:
The Physics of Biomolecular Motors
4:00 p.m. (coffee @ 3:30)
Molecular motors are tiny
protein engines that use the chemical energy stored in a molecular bond to
produce a variety of complex movements within biological cells. I will present an overview of these
fascinating machines as well as the current technologies used to study them. One specific motor, RNA polymerase,
transcribes DNA into messenger RNA, using the energy from nucleotide
polymerization to move along a DNA template.
Optical traps have been used to visualize these motions with ever
increasing precision. I will present
optical trapping data that provide evidence of a proofreading mechanism, i.e. a
molecular backspace key, used by RNA polymerase to correct mistakes made in the
RNA.