(5) A New Model of Molecular Motors

Makio TOKUNAGA

　Our single-molecule researches provided a direct evidence of the loose coupling mechanism on protein motors. I have shown that a new simple model named "asymmetric interaction model" can explain the results of the single-molecule experiments. Because this model is based only on a simple assumption that the interaction potential between motor proteins has a asymmetric shape, the theoretical formulation is very simple. Structural fluctuations of protein molecules can play an important role as a fluctuation sensor, which realize the Maxwell's demon using energies supplied by ATP hydrolysis.