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Dr. David Sivak, with his group members Callum Wareham and Deepak Gupta, published a joint experiment-theory paper that studies different ways to push on nanoscale molecular motors and measures the different methods’ energetic efficiency.

Collaborating with a research group from Tohoku University, the Sivak group looked into whether it is more efficient to push a molecular motor with a constant force or a constant velocity.  In their paper titled "Efficiently Driving F1 Molecular Motor in Experiment by Suppressing Nonequilibrium Variation", they experimented with ATP synthase molecular motors and showed that maintaining a fixed rotation rate minimizes energy waste and suppresses the effect of random fluctuations.  

The best method of running the molecular motor was compared to car suspensions, which smoothes out variations in motion and thereby reducing energy losses.  These findings on how microscopic motors might work could be relevant to future nanotechnology engineering.

Read the and the on APS.