|
Summary of Research Projects (Supports in 2005
Fiscal Year)
| Subjects |
Condensed molecular motor based on the LC dissipative
structures |
Representative
researcher |
Waseda University Yuka TABE |
| Aiming at the realization of an artificial
nano-motor, we made a pseudo-biomembrane composed of phospholipids and
chiral liquid crystal (LC) molecules and confirmed its performance as a
motor. The obtained film not only possessed the similar structure to biomembranes
but also exhibited the rotational function in the same way as ATPase in
biomembranes; when the protons are transferred across the film, the embedded
chiral molecules showed the collective unidirectional precession. This
is the first observation that such simple molecules (M.W.~400) yet with
chiral groups show the unidirectional rotation driven by transmembrane
proton transfer, the direction of which is well determined by the molecular
chirality and the transfer direction of protons. Assuming that the
collective precession should result from each constituent molecule's
unidirectional rotation, we did the Molecular Dynamics (MD) calculation
and the fluorescent depolarization measurement to detect the single molecular
dynamics. The results indicated that the chiral molecules should rotate
along the molecular long axis not equally in CW and CCW direction when
there was the transmembrane mass transfer. Although the probability difference
in the rotational direction doesn't surpass a few percents, the small
difference in each molecule can be transformed into the coherent unidirectional
precession via the liquid crystalline molecular interaction. |
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