Molecular Motors in Bionanotechnology

Biological molecular motors provide most cells with the dynamic systems required for their day-to-day existence. Examples occur in even the simplest organism (e.g. a bacteria virus), and the range of tasks that they carry out is vast. Over the last few years, there has been a large increase in the study of these motors, and it is becoming apparent that many motors will find uses in either bionanotechnology or synthetic biology.

Molecular Motors in Bionanotechnology describes a wide range of molecular motors, ranging from chemical motors to biological motors, in a manner that updates, or reviews, both classification of the type of motor and the grouping into families. Many techniques have evolved to study and characterise molecular motors at the single-molecule level (e.g. use of molecular tweezer devices for single-molecule studies). The text introduces the reader to the concepts and benefits of these techniques. In addition, it looks at the structural information and how this helps understand function and, finally, how some of these motors are being used or may be used in the future as part of a synthetic biology approach to building devices and sensors.