Design principles of molecular machines

Synopsis

Henry Ford was no big deal compared to natural selection.  Over a billion years, living things have evolved a menagerie of microscopic machines that achieve similar functions to their human-sized counterparts (car engines), but are 100 million times smaller.  I'll discuss the unfamiliar physics-archive these machines experience, stemming from their tiny size and soft-matter building blocks.  I'll also talk a bit about recent work (including our own) on the resulting design principles governing efficient operation of these marvelous molecular machines.