The lecture will describe designed families of molecules that undergo well-defined dynamic conformational changes - helix inversions, directionality reversals, and single bond rotations. Coherent control of these types of molecular motion can be used to create biomimetic function, such as the translation of molecular messages into chemical reactivity and the catalytic induction of out-of-equilibrium behaviour. In the context of this last topic, the lecture will reveal a startlingly simple prototype for a redox-driven autonomous molecular motor.
