Membranes To Molecular Machines

Today's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic "channels" open and close in our brain cell membranes; when we run, tiny "motors" spin in our muscle cell membranes; and when we see, light operates "molecular switches" in our eyes and nerves. A molecular-mechanical vision of life has become commonplace in both the halls of philosophy and the offices of drug companies, where researchers are developing “proton pump inhibitors” or medicines similar to Prozac. Membranes to Molecular Machines explores just how late twentieth-century science came to think of our cells and bodies this way. This story is told through the lens of membrane research, an unwritten history at the crossroads of molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, and the neurosciences, that directly feeds into today's synthetic biology as well as nano- and biotechnology. Mathias Grote shows how these sciences not only have made us think differently about life, they have, by reworking what membranes and proteins represent in laboratories, allowed us to manipulate life as "active matter" in new ways. Covering the science of biological membranes in the United States and Europe from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, this book connects that history to contemporary work with optogenetics, a method for stimulating individual neurons using light, and will enlighten and provoke anyone interested in the intersection of chemical research and the life sciences—from practitioner to historian to philosopher.

A Top 25 CHOICE 2016 Title, and recipient of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (OAT) Award. How much energy is released in ATP hydrolysis? How many mRNAs are in a cell? How genetically similar are two random people? What is faster, transcription or translation?Cell Biology by the Numbers explores these questions and dozens of others provid

Ch. 1. Molecular behavior in biological cells : the bacterial cytoplasm as a model system / Adrian H. Elcock and Andrew S. Thomas -- ch. 2. The light-harvesting apparatus in purple photosynthetic bacteria : introduction to a quantum biological device / Johan Strumpfer [und weitere] -- ch. 3. DNA polymerases : structure, function, and modeling / Tamar Schlick -- ch. 4. Information processing by nanomachines : decoding by the ribosome / Karissa Y. Sanbonmatsu, Scott C. Blanchard and Paul C. Whitford -- ch. 5. Chaperonins : the machines which fold proteins / Del Lucent, Martin C Stumpe and Vijay S Pande -- ch. 6. Muscle and myosin / Ronald S. Rock -- ch. 7. Protein kinases : phosphorylation machines / Elaine E. Thompson, Susan S. Taylor and J. Andrew McCammon -- ch. 8. Computational studies of Na+/H+ antiporter : structure, dynamics and function / Assaf Ganoth, Raphael Alhadeff and Isaiah T. Arkin -- ch. 9. Membrane transporters : molecular machines coupling cellular energy to vectorial transport across the membrane / Zhijian Huang [und weitere] -- ch. 10. ABC transporters / E.P. Coll and D.P. Tieleman -- ch. 11. Sodium-coupled secondary transporters : insights from structure-based computations / Elia Zomot [und weitere] -- ch. 12. Voltage-gated ion channels : the machines responsible for the nerve impulse / Benoit Roux and Francisco Bezanilla -- ch. 13. Voltage-gated channels and the heart / Jonathan R. Silva and Yoram Rudy

Life is an enduring mystery. Yet, science tells us that living beings are merely sophisticated structures of lifeless molecules. If this view is correct, where do the seemingly purposeful motions of cells and organisms originate? In Life's Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale. Below the calm, ordered exterior of a living organism lies microscopic chaos, or what Hoffmann calls the molecular storm -- specialized molecules immersed in a whirlwind of colliding water molecules. Our cells are filled with molecular machines, which, like tiny ratchets, transform random motion into ordered activity, and create the "purpose" that is the hallmark of life. Tiny electrical motors turn electrical voltage into motion, nanoscale factories custom-build other molecular machines, and mechanical machines twist, untwist, separate and package strands of DNA. The cell is like a city -- an unfathomable, complex collection of molecular workers working together to create something greater than themselves. Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through these sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. We are agglomerations of interacting nanoscale machines more amazing than anything in science fiction. Rather than relying on some mysterious "life force" to drive them -- as people believed for centuries -- life's ratchets harness instead the second law of thermodynamics and the disorder of the molecular storm. Grounded in Hoffmann's own cutting-edge research, Life's Ratchet reveals the incredible findings of modern nanotechnology to tell the story of how the noisy world of atoms gives rise to life itself.

This volume of The Enzymes features high-caliber thematic articles on the topic of molecular machines involved in protein transport across cellular membranes. The book consists of five parts which span the range of membranes including bacterial, endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondrial, chloroplast, and peroxismal.