{"id":188143,"date":"2024-04-26T10:26:43","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T15:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/more-efficient-molecular-motor-widens-potential-applications"},"modified":"2024-04-26T10:26:43","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T15:26:43","slug":"more-efficient-molecular-motor-widens-potential-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/more-efficient-molecular-motor-widens-potential-applications","title":{"rendered":"More efficient molecular motor widens potential applications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/more-efficient-molecular-motor-widens-potential-applications2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Light-driven molecular motors were first developed nearly 25 years ago at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. This resulted in a shared Nobel Prize for Chemistry for Professor Ben Feringa in 2016. However, making these motors do actual work proved to be a challenge. A new paper from the Feringa lab, published in <i>Nature Chemistry<\/i> on 26 April, describes a combination of improvements that brings real-life applications closer.<\/p>\n<p>First author Jinyu Sheng, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), adapted a \u201cfirst generation\u201d light-driven molecular motor during his Ph.D. studies in the Feringa laboratory. His main focus was to increase the efficiency of the motor molecule. \u201cIt is very fast, but only 2% of the photons that the molecule absorbs drive the rotary movement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This poor efficiency can get in the way of real-life applications. \u201cBesides, increased efficiency would give us better control of the motion,\u201d adds Sheng. The rotary motion of Feringa\u2019s molecular motor takes place in four steps: two of them are photochemical, while two are temperature-driven. The latter are unidirectional, but the photochemical steps cause an isomerization of the molecule that is usually reversible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Light-driven molecular motors were first developed nearly 25 years ago at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. This resulted in a shared Nobel Prize for Chemistry for Professor Ben Feringa in 2016. However, making these motors do actual work proved to be a challenge. A new paper from the Feringa lab, published in Nature Chemistry [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}