The widespread use of controlled molecular‐level motion in key natural processes suggests
that great rewards could come from bridging the gap between the present generation of
synthetic molecular systems, which by and large rely upon electronic and chemical effects to …

Molecular motor proteins are ubiquitous in nature 1 and have inspired attempts to create
artificial machines 2 that mimic their ability to produce controlled motion on the molecular
level. A recent example of an artificial molecular rotor is a molecule undergoing a …

A rotaxane is described in which a macrocycle moves reversibly between two hydrogen-
bonding stations after a nanosecond laser pulse. Observation of transient changes in the
optical absorption spectrum after photoexcitation allows direct quantitative monitoring of the …

Nature uses molecular motors and machines in virtually every significant biological process,
but demonstrating that simpler artificial structures operating through the same gross
mechanisms can be interfaced with—and perform physical tasks in—the macroscopic world …

The widespread use of molecular machines in biology has long suggested that great
rewards could come from bridging the gap between synthetic molecular systems and the
machines of the macroscopic world. In the last two decades, it has proved possible to design …

The circumrotation of a submolecular fragment in either direction in a synthetic molecular
structure is described. The movement of a small ring around a larger one occurs through
positional displacements arising from biased Brownian motion that are kinetically captured …

Motor proteins and other biological machines are highly efficient at converting energy into
directed motion and driving chemical systems away from thermodynamic equilibrium 1. But
even though these biological structures have inspired the design of many molecules that …

The ribosome builds proteins by joining together amino acids in an order determined by
messenger RNA. Here, we report on the design, synthesis, and operation of an artificial
small-molecule machine that travels along a molecular strand, picking up amino acids that …

Active metal template synthesis is a powerful new strategy for the construction of rotaxanes,
catenanes and other mechanically interlocked molecular structures. The key feature is that
the metal plays a dual role during the assembly of the interlocked architecture, acting as …

More than a quarter of a century after the first metal template synthesis of a [2] catenane in
Strasbourg, there now exists a plethora of strategies available for the construction of
mechanically bonded and entwined molecular level structures. Catenanes, rotaxanes, knots …