Is It a "Pumpjack"? An "Unsewing" Machine? In Search of the Right Metaphor for a New Molecular Wonder

Never presume that the list of molecular machines in the cell is exhausted by the bacterial flagellum, kinesin, and ATP synthase. Those are just three that we have animated thus far. There are so many thousands of machines in living cells, we don't stand a chance of running out of examples to talk about. Here's a new one: the "eukaryotic replicative CMG helicase." Call it CMG helicase for short (the -ase suffix indicates that it operates on a helix, namely the DNA double helix).

Of the many...