Recovery of state-specific potential of molecular motor from single-molecule trajectory

We have developed a novel method to evaluate the potential profile of a molecular motor at each chemical state from only the probe's trajectory and applied it to a rotary molecular motor F ₁-ATPase. By using this method, we could also obtain the information regarding the mechanochemical coupling and energetics. We demonstrate that the position-dependent transition of the chemical states is the key feature for the highly efficient free-energy transduction by F ₁-ATPase.