Molecules exhibit non-reciprocal interactions
<p>In work published in the prestigious Cell Press journal <em>Chem</em>, UMaine theoretical physicist R. Dean Astumian and collaborators Ayusman Sen and Niladri Sekhar Mandal at Penn State have published a different mechanism by which single molecules can interact non-reciprocally without hydrodynamic effects. This mechanism invokes the local gradients of reactants and products due to the reactions facilitated by every chemical catalyst, a biological example of which is an enzyme. Because the response of a catalyst to the gradient depends on the catalyst’s properti...
Source: eurekalert.org