On Mon, 19 Feb 2001 03:24:54 +0100, Tor Olav Kristensen <tor### [at] hotmailcom>
wrote:

<snip>

I thought this was a strikingly original image when I saw it, but now, after
reading the the excerpt below from the science section of today's Guardian
newspaper, I see Tor, that you have just been looking through your molecule
scanning microscope  :-)

"For years ATP was called the powerhouse of the cell, but this
was a metaphor: no one expected it actually to rotate like a
turbine, but this is in fact what it does. The ATP motor is an
enzyme, ATP synthase, with a structure that has been likened
to a mushroom: six pods sit around a spindle, and the reaction
precesses around the six heads. In the cell the rotation itself
does not drive anything physically: it is a byproduct of the cyclic
reactions that have to cascade to keep going. In living cells, the
energy produced is passed down an electrochemical chain of
reactions until it finds useful work to do, in moving a muscle, for
example."
----------------------
dav### [at] hamiltonitecom
http://hamiltonite.com/

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