Effective dissipation: breaking time-reversal symmetry in driven microscopic energy transmission

Abstract

At molecular scales, fluctuations play a significant role and prevent biomolecular processes from always proceeding in a preferred direction, raising the question of how limited amounts of free energy can be dissipated to obtain directed progress. We examine the system and process characteristics that efficiently break time-reversal symmetry at fixed energy loss; in particular for a simple model of a molecular machine, an intermediate energy barrier produces unusually high asymmetry for a given dissipation. We relate the symmetry-breaking factors found in this model to recent observations of biomolecular machines.

9 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Theory of nonequilibrium free energy transduction by molecular machines
• Entropy production and time-asymmetry in the presence of strong interactions
• Allocating dissipation across a molecular machine cycle to maximize flux
• Physical constraints in intracellular signaling: the cost of sending a bit
• Toward the design principles of molecular machines
• Breaking time-reversal symmetry for ratchet models of molecular machines