ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2002
Molecules, muscles, and machines: universal performance characteristics of motors.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2002. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Activity affects intraspecific body-size scaling of metabolic rate in ectothermic animals.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2009Pooled it
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- Insect Flight: State of the Field and Future Directions.Integrative and comparative biology · 2024Article
- Locomotion rhythm makes power and speed.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Necrobotics: Biotic Materials as Ready-to-Use Actuators.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2022Article
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- From cockroaches to tanks: The same power-mass-speed relation describes both biological and artificial ground-mobile systems.PloS one · 2021Article
- Structural basis for power stroke vs. Brownian ratchet mechanisms of motor proteins.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Molecular plasticity and functional enhancements of leg muscles in response to hypergravity in the fruit flyThe Journal of experimental biology · 2017Article
- Non-equilibrium assembly of microtubules: from molecules to autonomous chemical robots.Chemical Society reviews · 2017Review
- Force per cross-sectional area from molecules to muscles: a general property of biological motors.Royal Society open science · 2016Article
- Light-induced actuating nanotransducers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Article
- To eat and not be eaten: optimal foraging behaviour in suspension feeding copepods.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2013Article
- Maximal force characteristics of the Ca(2+)-powered actuator of Vorticella convallaria.Biophysical journal · 2012Article
- Unsteady motion: escape jumps in planktonic copepods, their kinematics and energetics.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2010Article
- Allometry of hummingbird lifting performance.The Journal of experimental biology · 2010Article
- Creation of functional micro/nano systems through top-down and bottom-up approaches.Molecular & cellular biomechanics : MCB · 2009Review
- Crystalline molecular machines: encoding supramolecular dynamics into molecular structure.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2005Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animal- and human-made motors vary widely in size and shape, are constructed of vastly different materials, use different mechanisms, and produce an enormous range of mass-specific power. Despite these differences, there is remarkable consistency in the maximum net force produced by broad classes of animal- and human-made motors. Motors that use force production to accomplish steady translational motion of a load (myosin, kinesin, dynein, and RNA polymerase molecules, muscle cells, whole muscles, winches, linear actuators, and rockets) have maximal force outputs that scale as the two-thirds power of mass, i.e., with cross-sectional area. Motors that use cyclical motion to generate force and are more subject to multiaxial stress and vibration have maximal force outputs that scale as a single isometric function of motor mass with mass-specific net force output averaging 57 N x kg(-1) (SD = 14). Examples of this class of motors includes flying birds, bats, and insects, swimming fish, various taxa of running animals, piston engines, electric motors, and all types of jets. Dependence of force production and stress resistance on cross-sectional area is well known, but the isometric scaling and common upper limit of mass-specific force production by cyclical motion motors has not been recognized previously and is not explained by an existing body of theory. Remarkably, this finding indicates that most of the motors used by humans and animals for transportation have a common upper limit of mass-specific net force output that is independent of materials and mechanisms.
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Registered trials
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