Many biological channels perform highly selective transport without direct input of metabolic energy and without transitions from a "closed" to an "open" state during transport. Mechanisms of selectivity of such channels serve as an inspiration for creation of artificial nanomolecular sorting devices and biosensors. To elucidate the transport mechanisms, it is important to understand the transp...

There is currently great interest in the design of nanodevices that are capable of performing linear or rotary movements. Protein molecular machines are abundant in biology but it has recently been proposed that nucleic acids could also act as nanomolecular machines in model systems. Several types of movements have been described with DNA machines: rotation and "scissors-like" opening and closi...

The purpose of this project is to build nanomolecular machinery for photosynthesis by use of artificial molecules. The world’s most successful molecular machinery for photosynthesis is that of green plants—the two photosystems and related protein complexes. These are composed almost exclusively from organic molecules, plus a small amount of metal elements playing important roles. Inspired by th...