Energy sources protein-based machine

Now, because it can cost just as much energy to produce an inefficient and more limited protein-based machine as it can to produce a more efficient and/or a new machine that can access a new energy source, obviously with natural selection the arrow of time for biology is toward greater complexity and diversity function (see Chapter 6). 

A flow of electrons in a series of cell membrane-associated oxidation and reduction cycles provides the energy source in the energyconverting thylakoid membranes of plants and inner mitochondrial membranes of plants and animals. In the process of this electron flow, membrane proteins pump protons across a cell membrane to increase the concentration of protons on one side of the membrane (to be considered in Chapter 8). Another protein-based machine uses the high concentration of protons on one side of a cell membrane to drive the formation of ATP as the protons pass to the low concentration side of the membrane (also to be considered in Chapter 8). 

Each Means of Changing T, Represents an Energy Source for Protein-based Machines... 

Protein-based Machines Convert Mumerous Sources of Energy from One Form or Location to Another... 

More to the point, we now see biology s access to energy by means of the consilient mechanism of energy conversion, combined with readily available mutations to improve protein-based machines, as the source of increased structural order and functional diversity. 

Protein is an excellent natural nanomaterial for molecular machines. Protein-based molecular machines, often driven by an energy source such as ATP, are abundant in biology. Surfactant peptide molecules undergo self-assembly in solution to form a variety of supermolecular structures at the nanoscale such as micelles, vesicles, unilamellar membranes, and tubules (Maslov and Sneppen, 2002). These assemblies can be engineered to perform a broad spectrum of functions, including delivery systems for therapeutics and templates for nanoscale wires in the case of tubules, and to create and manipulate different structures from the same peptide for many different nanomaterials and nanoengineering applications. 

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