Abstract
Intracellular transport in eukarya is attributed to motor proteins that transduce chemical energy into directed mechanical energy. These nanoscale size motors carry organelles and other cargo on microtubles, are active in mitosis, and play roles in other functions. They function in a highly viscous setting with overdamped dynamics and are in configurations far from conventional notions of equilibrium. We derive a dissipation principle that describes transport in a typical motor system that establishes a weak topology as the natural environment for the system and also yields the equations of evolution.
Chipot, M