Nature’s tiniest rotor runs like clockwork

With amazing efficiency, cells synthesize and store energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate, ATP for short. Bioengineers often regard the enzyme that makes this chemical energy as the ultimate molecular machine.

Hiroyasu Itoh at Hamamatsu Photonics in Tsukuba, Japan, and his colleagues have found a way to use the same enzyme, ATP synthase, to power nanoscale devices.