2026.6.17 Nathalie Katsonis from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) visited to the Department of Polymer Science at Fudan University. She delivered a presentation titled Mechanochemistry of Artificial Molecular Machines. The report explains how the surrounding molecular environment regulates the operation of the motor. Such mechanochemical regulation is central to adaptive functions in biology. She showed that, in lipid bilayers, the rotation of artificial molecular motors is significantly slowed, and that the extent of this slowdown correlates with membrane stiffness. As a result, the mechanical state of themembrane can be read out directly by simple UV-visible spectroscopy. Because membrane mechanics are al-tered in many disease states, such motor-based optical readouts may provide a route to identifying pathological changes in membranesI will then show that mechanical load transmitted through a stretchable polymer matrix can nearly doublethe rate of motor rotation by accelerating both helix-inversion steps in the motor cycle. This result reveals a re-ciprocal feedback mechanism between material mechanics and molecular-motor kinetics: molecular machinescan drive soft-matter motion, but soft matter can also regulate molecular-machine operation. More broadly, thisprinciple points toward adaptive materials in which artificial molecular machines sense local stress or stiffnessand adjust their operation according to their mechanical environment.