The investigation is devoted to give proof to the simple idea, that a globular protein is a molecular machine. This machine
effectively converts electromagnetic energy of thermal equilibrium radiation (TER) to energy of acoustic oscillations
associated with low-temperature equilibrium fluctuations of protein structure. The laws of thermal equilibrium radiation
, the activation process model and photon-to-phonon transformation mechanism in solid state are used to prove
this idea. The absorbing ability of a globule is calculated for myoglobin and beta-hemoglobin macromolecules. It is
shown, that up to 36 - 37 % of electromagnetic energy of thermal equilibrium radiation is conversed to energy of the
phonon bath. Then the bath's energy is used to enable
low-temperature equilibrium fluctuations of a globule. Thus, it is
proved, that protein macromolecule is an acoustic resonator capable to store energy for structural transformations. So, a
globular protein can be used as a metamaterial prototype for electromagnetic-acoustic energy conversion at low temperatures.
In 1990 the activation process model was proposed [1]. Development of the activation process model [2,3] led to
description of either adiabatic or non-adiabatic processes for a molecular structure transformation [4]. The model is
based on two simple assumptions: 1. During the transformation process, the potential energy of a molecular particle
changes discretely or in quanta: the transformation process appears to be a series of quantum subsystems occurring in
sequence (these subsystems may also be defined as identical quantum oscillators); 2. In the field of IR-laser radiation, an
energy exchange between IR radiation and atoms of the molecular particle results in discrete translation of these atoms
which absorb oscillation energy by identical quanta up to molecular structure complete transformation. The numerical
simulation carried out according to the model offered has allowed to describe such processes as: dissociation of SF6
molecule [4] and styrene ion C8H8+ [5]; selfdiffusion processes in Si, Ge and GaAs clusters [6]; folding and insertion for
the &bgr;-barrel outer membrane protein A (OmpA) of Escherichia coli into dioleoylphosphatidylcholine (DOPC) bilayers
[7]. So, we can see this model has a significant field of application to the activation processes stimulated by IR laser
radiation.
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