Computational Studies of Viral Protein Nano-Actuators

Abstract

The recent explosion of research in nanotechnology, combined with important discoveries in molecular biology, has created a new interest in biomolecular machines and robots. The main goal in the field of biomolecular machines is to use various biological elements—whose function at the cellular level creates a motion, force or a signal—as machine components that perform the same function in response to the same biological stimuli but in an artificial setting. In this way, proteins and DNA could act as motors, mechanical joints, transmission elements or sensors. If all these different components were assembled together, they could potentially form nanodevices with multiple degrees of freedom, able to apply forces and manipulate objects in the nanoscale world, transfer information from the nano to the macroscale world and even travel in a nanoscale environment. Just as conventional macromachines are used to develop forces and motions to accomplish specific tasks, bio-nanomachines can be used to manipulate nano-objects, to assemble Computational Studies of Viral Protein Nano-Actuators