Related papers: Fluctuation analysis of mechanochemical coupling d…
Molecular motors power directed transport of cargoes within cells. Even if a single motor is sufficient to transport a cargo, motors often cooperate in small teams. We discuss the cooperative cargo transport by several motors theoretically…
Constructing physical models of living cells and tissues is an extremely challenging task because of the high complexities of both intra- and intercellular processes. In addition, the force that a single cell generates vanishes in total due…
Enzymatic molecules that actively support many cellular processes, including transport, cell division and cell motility, are known as motor proteins or molecular motors. Experimental studies indicate that they interact with each other and…
Dynamics of molecular motors that move along linear lattices and interact with them via reversible destruction of specific lattice bonds is investigated theoretically by analyzing exactly solvable discrete-state ``burnt-bridge'' models.…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
Single kinesin molecular motors can processively move along a microtubule (MT) a few micrometers on average before dissociating. However, cellular length scales over which transport occurs are several hundred microns and more. Why seemingly…
Motor enzymes are remarkable molecular machines that use the energy derived from the hydrolysis of a nucleoside triphosphate to generate mechanical movement, achieved through different steps that constitute their kinetic cycle. These…
We demonstrate that characteristic nodules emerge in cultures of several malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) cell lines. Instead of excessive local cell proliferation, the nodules arise by Myosin II-driven cell contractility. The…
Living cells exhibit an important out-of-equilibrium mechanical activity, mainly due to the forces generated by molecular motors. These motor proteins, acting individually or collectively on the cytoskeleton, contribute to the violation of…
We address the controversial hot question concerning the validity of the loose-coupling versus the lever-arm models in the actomyosin dynamics by re-interpreting and extending the washboard potential model proposed by some of us in a…
Dynamic cooperativity in monomeric enzymes is characterized in terms of a non-Michaelis-Menten kinetic behaviour. The latter is believed to be associated with mechanisms that include multiple reaction pathways due to enzymatic…
Self organization mechanisms are essential for the cytoskeleton to adapt to the requirements of living cells. They rely on the intricate interplay of cytoskeletal filaments, crosslinking proteins and molecular motors. Here we present an in…
The interaction of the actin cytoskeleton with cell-substrate adhesions is necessary for cell migration. While the trajectories of motile cells have a stochastic character, investigations of cell motility mechanisms rarely elaborate on the…
Kinesin and related motor proteins utilize ATP fuel to propel themselves along the external surface of microtubules in a processive and directional fashion. We show that the observed step-like motion is possible through time varying charge…
Synchronization of activity among myocytes constituting vital organs, e.g., the heart, is crucial for physiological functions. Self-organized coordination in such heterogeneous ensemble of excitable and oscillatory cells is therefore of…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
Inspired by recent experiments on the dynamics of particles and polymers in artificial cytoskeletons and in cells, we introduce a modified Langevin equation for a particle in an environment that is a viscoelastic medium and that is brought…
Molecular motors belonging to the kinesin and myosin super family hydrolyze ATP by cycling through a sequence of chemical states. These cytoplasmic motors are dimers made up of two linked identical monomeric globular proteins. Fueled by the…
Molecular motors play pivotal roles in organizing the interior of cells. A motor efficient in cargo transport would move along cytoskeletal filaments with a high speed and a minimal error in transport distance (or time) while consuming a…