Energetics and efficiency of a molecular motor model

Abstract

The energetics and efficiency of a linear molecular motor model proposed by Mogilner et al. (Phys. Lett. 237, 297 (1998)) is analyzed from an analytical point of view. The model which is based on protein friction with a track is described by coupled Langevin equations for the motion in combination with coupled master equations for the ATP hydrolysis. Here the energetics and efficiency of the motor is addressed using a many body scheme with focus on the efficiency at maximum power (EMP). It is found that the EMP is reduced from about 10 pct in a heuristic description of the motor to about 1 per mille when incorporating the full motor dynamics, owing to the strong dissipation associated with the motor action.

23 pages, 6 figures, final version, appeared in J. Stat. Mech. P12001 (2013)

References in corpus (5)

• Efficiency at maximum power: An analytically solvable model for stochastic heat engines
• Efficiency of molecular motors at maximum power
• Efficiency at maximum power of interacting molecular machines
• Efficiency of molecular machines with continuous phase space
• Bounds and phase diagram of efficiency at maximum power for tight-coupling molecular motors