Related papers: Fluctuation analysis of mechanochemical coupling d…
F1-ATPase catalyses ATP hydrolysis and converts the cellular chemical energy into mechanical rotation. The hydrolysis reaction in F1-ATPase does not follow the widely believed Michaelis-Menten mechanism. Instead, the hydrolysis mechanism…
Unlike macroscopic engines, the molecular machinery of living cells is strongly affected by fluctuations. Stochastic Thermodynamics uses Markovian jump processes to model the random transitions between the chemical and configurational…
The stochastic dynamics of flagellar beating for micro-swimmers, such as flagellated cells, sperms and microalgae, is widely thought to include a feedback mechanism between flagellar shape and the rate of activation/de-activation of the $N…
Molecular motors do not work in isolation {\it in-vivo}. We highlight some of the coordinations, cooperations and competitions that determine the collective properties of molecular motors in eukaryotic cells. In the context of traffic-like…
We investigate by analytical means the stochastic equations of motion of a linear molecular motor model based on the concept of protein friction. Solving the coupled Langevin equations originally proposed by Mogilner et al. (A. Mogilner et…
Intracellular transport is mediated by molecular motors that pull cargos along cytoskeletal filaments. Many cargos move bidirectionally and are transported by two teams of motors which move into opposite directions along the filament. We…
We discuss a theoretical model for bidirectional cargo transport in biological cells, which is driven by teams of molecular motors and subject to thermal fluctuations. The model describes explicitly the directed motion of the molecular…
We address the controversial hot question concerning the validity of the loose coupling versus the lever-arm theories in the actomyosin dynamics by re-interpreting and extending the phenomenological washboard potential model proposed by…
Myosin-II's rod-like tail drives filament assembly with a head arrangement that should generate equal and opposite contractile forces on actin--if one assumes that the filament is a symmetric bipole. Self-assembled myosin filaments are…
The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…
We investigate theoretically the violations of Einstein and Onsager relations, and the efficiency for a single processive motor operating far from equilibrium using an extension of the two-state model introduced by Kafri {\em et al.}…
We propose a mechanism of cell motility which is based on contraction and does not require protrusion. The contraction driven translocation of a cell is due to internal flow of the cytoskeleton generated by molecular motors. Each motor…
The actin cortex is a thin layer of actin, myosin, and actin binding proteins that underlies the membrane of most animal cells. It is highly dynamic and can undergo remodelling on time-scales of tens of seconds thanks to protein turnover…
The structural reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton is facilitated through the action of motor proteins that crosslink the actin filaments and transport them relative to each other. Here, we present a combined experimental-computational…
Cells are strongly out-of-equilibrium systems driven by continuous energy supply. They carry out many vital functions requiring active transport of various ingredients and organelles, some being small, others being large. The cytoskeleton,…
Myosin motor proteins drive vigorous steady-state fluctuations in the actin cytoskeleton of cells. Endogenous embedded semiflexible filaments such as microtubules, or added filaments such as single-walled carbon nanotubes are used as novel…
The dynamics of motor protein molecules that have two subunits is investigated using simple discrete stochastic models. Exact steady-state analytical expressions are obtained for velocities and dispersions for any number of intermediate…
We develop a general theory of microtubule (MT) deformations by molecular motors generating internal force doublets within the MT lattice. We describe two basic internal excitations, the S and V shape, and compare them with experimental…
The effect of interactions on dynamics of coupled motor proteins is investigated theoretically. A simple stochastic discrete model, that allows to calculate explicitly the dynamic properties of the system, is developed. It is shown that…
We propose a novel mechanism of cell motility, which relies on the coupling of actin polymerization at the cell membrane to geometric confinement. We consider a polymerizing viscoelastic cytoskeletal gel confined in a narrow channel, and…