dazzlepecs
Registered Senior Member
I remember there was some single-celled thing that had an apparatus of this sort... Anyone know what im talking about or am i going senile?
I'm assuming you mean a flagellum.. ?
Look here:
I do not remeber the name or have ref, but there is at least one tiny organism with a "cork screw tail" (used to "swim") that can continuously rotate many 360 degree turns. I do not know how it moves it / transfers power to it - seems impossible but as no one has informed that organism of this impossibility, it continues to swim around spinning its tail.:bugeye:
I would think that sperm cells are the key to this question. They have the ability to locomote while unattached to their organism. (Perhaps white blood cells also do this, I don't know.) Suspend one in an organ containing a nutrifying liquid medium like blood, stick its little appendage out through a primitive sealed bearing orifice, and let that appendage move around outside the organism. From there, the development of rotary motion would not be much of a challenge. Nor would suspending it in a sealed bearing orifice at both ends. It could become larger, an organ unto itself with an internal blood supply, feeding wheels which could grow out from the axle organ. Presto, organic wheels a la James P. Hogan's Code of the Lifemaker. (Although his alien creatures appear to be mechanical artifacts from our perspective, as do we from theirs.)Flagellar movement is considered rotary. That's why they hypothesized that "proton turbine".
Nature created a rotary motor with a diameter of 30 nm. Motility of bacteria, such as Salmonella and E. coli with a body size of 1 ~ 2 microns, is driven by rapid rotation of a helical propeller by such a tiny little motor at its base. This organelle is called the flagellum, made of a rotary motor and a thin helical filament that grows up to about 15 microns. It rotates at around 20,000 rpm, at energy consumption of only around 10-16 W and with energy conversion efficiency close to 100%. Prof. Namba’s research group is going to reveal the mechanism of this highly efficient flagellar motor that is far beyond the capabilities of artificial motors.
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Bacterial cells swim actively by rotating a bundle of flagella. The motor switches its direction every few seconds to change the swimming direction of the cells for bacteria to seek better environments. Reversal of the motor rotation causes a structural change of the flagellar filament from the left-handed to the right-handed helical form. This makes the flagellar bundle fall apart, propelling force imbalanced, leading to changes of the swimming direction.
They had wheels and all the characteristics we would expect of machinery. To humans they looked exactly like artifacts originally designed by organic creatures using the same kinds of materials we might have available and the same kinds of technologies we might develop in a few more centuries, although no one who studied them could really understand them well enough to say that with certainty. They were self-replicating, with the kicker that their blueprints were divided in half and each creature had halves of two different blueprints, which had to be combined to build a new one. That gave the opportunity for random combination as well as mutation. They had thus evolved far beyond their original "design" and had built their own civilization.What did those do in the book?
Basically, the ATP synthase enzyme could be considered a rotary motor as well, requiring 12 protons per revolution to be passed through the system, while it is synthesizing ATP in the same time, with close to 100% efficiency. That would mean that the theoretical net expenditure while idling would be close to zero.