Assembling life's molecular motor

As part of a project dedicated to modeling how single-celled purple bacteria turn light into food, a team of computational scientists simulated a complete ATP synthase in all-atom detail. The work builds on the project’s first phase—a 100-million atom photosynthetic organelle called a chromatophore—and gives scientists an unprecedented glimpse into a biological machine whose energy efficiency far surpasses that of any artificial system.

(via WSJ)