Full-Speed Rotation of F1-ATPase
  












  












  









Slow playback at 1/267 the original speed (recorded at 8,000 frames per second)












  
Although an actin filament was an impeding load for the tiny F1 motor, swinging a gold bead 4 times as large as the motor body was nothing.  The motor achieved the speed of 8,000 revolutions per minute, a value familiar to motor fans.  Even at this full speed, the F1 motor made clear 120° steps, as seen in the movie above.  The instantaneous speed during each 120° step exceeded 100,000 revolutions per minute, the speed of the fastest man-made motor that runs in vacuum.
(The white cloud in the movie is the image of the gold bead blurred to ~10 times the actual bead size by the effect of light diffraction.  Thanks to the (incidental) oblique attachment shown in the figure at left, we were able to resolve the rotation.)
  
                                                            Yasuda, R. et al., Nature 410, 898-904 (2001).