Free Republic

World’s Smallest Rotary Engine Highlighted May 25, 2009 — The smallest rotary motor in the world keeps your body humming.  It also keeps bacteria, plants, polar bears, giraffes, salmon, sea urchins and just about everything else humming.  It’s a nano-wonder called ATP synthase.  This molecular motor has been reported many times in these pages, but not recently; what’s new?  The state of our knowledge about ATP synthase was summarized in a paper in Nature by three German scientists.[1]  Basically, it’s a fascinating machine, but there’s still a lot more to learn.     It’s not just figurative speech to call...