Related papers: Enhancement of cargo processivity by cooperating m…

Motor proteins display widely different stepping patterns as they move on microtubule tracks, from the deterministic linear or helical motion performed by the protein kinesin to the uncoordinated random steps made by dynein. How these…

The movement of intracellular cargo transported by molecular motors is commonly marked by switches between directed motion and stationary pauses. The predominant measure for assessing movement is effective diffusivity, which predicts the…

Molecular motors work collectively to transport cargo within cells, with anywhere from one to several hundred motors towing a single cargo. For a broad class of collective-transport systems, we use tools from stochastic thermodynamics to…

We model analytically the dynamics of a cytoskeletal filament in a motility assay. The filament is described as rigid rod free to slide in two dimensions. The motor proteins consist of polymeric tails tethered to the plane and modeled as…

Long, elastic filaments cross-linked and deformed by active molecular motors occur in various natural settings. The overall macroscopic mechanical response of such a composite network depends on the coupling between the active and the…

Motor-driven cytoskeletal remodeling in cellular systems can often be accompanied by a diffusive-like effect at local scales, but distinguishing the contributions of the ordering process, such as active contraction of a network, from this…

Molecular motors are essential components for the biophysical functions of the cell. Our current quantitative understanding of how multiple motors move along a single track is not complete; even though models and theories for single motor…

Experiments suggest that the migration of some cells in the three-dimensional extra cellular matrix bears strong resemblance to one-dimensional cell migration. Motivated by this observation, we construct and study a minimal one-dimensional…

Power-law dwell times have been observed for molecular motors in living cells, but the origins of these trapped states are not known. We introduce a minimal model of motors moving on a two-dimensional network of filaments, and simulations…

Multiple experiments show that various submicron particles such as magnetosomes, RNA messengers, viruses, and even much smaller nanoparticles such as globular proteins diffuse anomalously slow in viscoelastic cytosol of living cells. Hence,…

In this work we study the assisted translocation of a polymer across a membrane nanopore, inside which a molecular motor exerts a force fuelled by the hydrolysis of ATP molecules. In our model the motor switches to its active state for a…

Motor proteins drive persistent motion and self-organisation of cytoskeletal filaments. However, state-of-the-art microscopy techniques and continuum modelling approaches focus on large length and time scales. Here, we perform…

The transportation of the cargoes in biological cells is primarily driven by the motor proteins on filamentous protein tracks. The stochastic nature of the motion of motor protein often leads to its spontaneous detachment from the track.…

We present simulations that reveal a surprisingly large effect of hydrodynamic coupling on the speed of thermal ratchet motors. The model that we use considers particles performing thermal ratchet motion in a hydrodynamic solvent. Using…

Systems with two species of active molecular motors moving on (cytoskeletal) filaments into opposite directions are studied theoretically using driven lattice gas models. The motors can unbind from and rebind to the filaments. Two motors…

Mechanochemical coupling was studied for two different types of myosin motors in cells: myosin V, which carries cargo over long distances by as a single molecule; and myosin II, which generates a contracting force in cooperation with other…

Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…

Biofilament-motor protein complexes are ubiquitous in biology and drive the transport of cargo vital for many fundamental cellular processes. As they move, motor proteins exert compressive forces on the filaments to which they are attached,…

As society paves its way towards device miniaturization and precision medicine, micro-scale actuation and guided transport become increasingly prominent research fields with high impact in both technological and clinical contexts. In order…

We study the influence of filament elasticity on the motion of collective molecular motors. It is found that for a backbone flexibility exceeding a characteristic value (motor stiffness divided through the mean displacement between attached…