Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Anandakrishnan R
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5056049 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Anandakrishnan Ramu R Zhang Zining Z Donovan-Maiye Rory R Zuckerman Daniel M DM
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20160919 40
The ATP synthase (F-ATPase) is a highly complex rotary machine that synthesizes ATP, powered by a proton electrochemical gradient. Why did evolution select such an elaborate mechanism over arguably simpler alternating-access processes that can be reversed to perform ATP synthesis? We studied a systematic enumeration of alternative mechanisms, using numerical and theoretical means. When the alternative models are optimized subject to fundamental thermodynamic constraints, they fail to match the k ...[more]