Related papers: Microtubule depolymerization by the kinesin-8 moto…
Fluctuations in the physical properties of biological machines are inextricably linked to their functions. Distributions of run-lengths and velocities of processive molecular motors, like kinesin-1, are accessible through single molecule…
Kinesin is a molecular motor that transports cargo along microtubules. The results of many {\it in vitro} experiments on kinesin-1 are described by kinetic models \cite{Clancy11} in which one transition corresponds to the forward motion and…
Polymerization of dendritic actin networks underlies important mechanical processes in cell biology such as the protrusion of lamellipodia, propulsion of growth cones in dendrites of neurons, intracellular transport of organelles and…
Kinesins move processively toward the plus end of microtubules by hydrolyzing ATP for each step. From an enzymatic perspective, the mechanism of mechanical motion coupled to the nucleotide chemistry is often well explained using a…
Using the model for the processive movement of a dimeric kinesin we proposed before, we study the dynamics of a number of mutant homodimeric and heterodimeric kinesins that were constructed by Kaseda et al. (Kaseda, K., Higuchi, H. and…
Microtubules (MTs) are filamentous protein polymers roughly 25 nm in diameter. Ubiquitous in eukaryotes, MTs are well known for their structural role but also act as actuators, sensors, and, in association with other proteins, checkpoint…
Conventional kinesin walks by a hand-over-hand mechanism on the microtubule (MT) by taking $\sim$ 8$nm$ discrete steps, and consumes one ATP molecule per step. The time needed to complete a single step is on the order of twenty…
In eukaryotic cells, many motor proteins can move simultaneously on a single microtubule track. This leads to interesting collective phenomena like jamming. Recently we reported ({\it Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 95}, 118101 (2005)}) a lattice-gas…
Single molecular motor kinesin harnesses thermal and non-thermal fluctuations to transport various cargoes along microtubules, converting chemical energy to directed movements. To describe the non-thermal fluctuations generated by the…
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…
Dynamin is a ubiquitous GTPase that tubulates lipid bilayers and is implicated in many membrane severing processes in eukaryotic cells. Setting the grounds for a better understanding of this biological function, we develop a generalized…
Cellular cargo can be bound to cytoskeletal filaments by one or multiple active or passive molecular motors. Recent experiments have shown that the presence of auxiliary, nondriving motors, results in an enhanced processivity of the cargo,…
Molecular motors are involved in key transport processes inside actin-based cellular protrusions. The motors carry cargo proteins to the protrusion tip which participate in regulating the actin polymerization, and play a key role in…
An inchworm processive mechanism is proposed to explain the motion of dimeric molecular motors such as kinesin. We present here preliminary results for this mechanism focusing on observables like mean velocity, coupling ratio and efficiency…
Intracellular bidirectional transport of cargo on microtubule filaments is achieved by the collective action of oppositely directed dynein and kinesin motors. Experiments have found that in certain cases, inhibiting the activity of one type…
A novel theoretical model of dynamic instability of a system of linear (1D) microtubules (MTs) in a bounded domain is introduced for studying the role of a cell edge in vivo and analyzing the effect of competition for a limited amount of…
The presence of membrane tubules in living cells is essential to many biological processes. In cells, one mechanism to form nanosized lipid tubules is via molecular motor induced bilayer extraction. In this paper, we describe a simple…
Many cellular processes are tightly connected to the dynamics of microtubules (MTs). While in neuronal axons MTs mainly regulate intracellular trafficking, they participate in cytoskeleton reorganization in many other eukaryotic cells,…
In microtubule-based active nematics, motor-driven extensile motion of microtubule bundles powers chaotic large-scale dynamics. We quantify the interfilament sliding motion both in isolated bundles and in a dense active nematic. The…
How molecular motors like Kinesin regulates the affinity to the rail protein in the process of ATP hydrolysis remains to be uncovered. To understand the regulation mechanism, we investigate the structural fluctuation of KIF1A in different…