Michael Le Page is a person.
There were engines inside E. coli.
This is a picture of the fusebulb.
The first components of a molecular engine have been created from scratch.
The University of Washington's Alexis Courbet says that they are starting very simply. As he and his team create more basic parts, it will be possible to combine them into even more sophisticated machines.
David Baker is a team member at the University of Washington. He says that one day the machines might be used to repair arteries or damaged cells.
There are many machines on Earth. Living organisms are made of many different types of machines, including the flagellum of somebacteria.
It is hard to adapt existing machines for other purposes because they have been designed for specific purposes.
Courbet, Baker and colleagues designed new proteins that were not found in nature.
There are chains of acids. The structure of a natural proteins is determined by the sequence of the 20 different amino acids in a chain. Predicting the shape of a sequence is one of the major problems biologists have been working on for decades.
Courbet used a suite of software called "Rosetta" to design several different versions of the axles and rotors. The AlphaFold system developed by DeepMind is similar to the RoseTTaFold system.
The team made the machines by putting DNA coding into the E. colibacteria and then using a method called electron microscope to check their structure.
The different shapes that would be expected if the axles were turning in the rotors were shown. The team can't say for sure if the axles are turning in the rotors because they can only provide a series of stills.
If they are, it would be a random back-and-forth movement driven by Brownian motion. The team is designing more components to drive the motion in one direction.
It is the first time anyone has come close to designing a machine that makes a specific type of molecule.
Baker's have designed novel single proteins before, but not such complex assemblages.
The structural detail of the Baker group's assembly is very impressive.
He says that a group of people last year unveiled a piece of machinery made of DNA, and two other groups have created similar machines.
Stömmer thinks that the machines could end up being used.
It is not quite there yet, better, but I believe that designing and making proteins and other molecules that do things is going to be a major industry that will have major effects on our lives.
There is a journal reference called Science.
There are more on these topics.
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