Related papers: Kinesin's backsteps under mechanical load
Routinely navigating through an ever-changing and unsteady environment, and utilizing chemical energy, molecular motors transport the cell's crucial components, such as neurotransmitters and organelles. They generate force and pull cargo,…
Although the disease-relevant microtubule-associated protein tau is known to severely inhibit kinesin-based transport in vitro, the potential mechanisms for reversing this detrimental effect to maintain healthy transport in cells remain…
How do humans move? Advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have produced impressive results in capturing human motion using physics-based humanoid control. However, torque-controlled humanoids fail to model key aspects of human motor…
Recent experimental studies strongly suggest the influence of glial purinergic transmission in the modulation of synaptic dynamics. By releasing adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which accumulates as adenosine, astrocytes tonically suppressed…
In this study we formulate a theoretical approach, based on a Boltzmann-like kinetic equation, to describe pattern formation in two-dimensional mixtures of microtubular filaments and molecular motors. Following the previous work by Aranson…
We analyze the nonlinear waves that propagate on a microtubule that is tethered at its minus end due to kinesin walking on it, as is seen during the fluid mixing caused by cytoplasmic streaming in Drosophila oocytes.The model we use assumes…
Protein synthesis is one of the most fundamental biological processes, which consumes a significant amount of cellular resources. Despite existence of multiple mathematical models of translation, varying in the level of mechanistical…
Many proteins undergo conformational changes during their activity. A full understanding of the function of these proteins can only be obtained if different conformations and transitions between them can be monitored in aqueous solution,…
Dynamically crosslinked semiflexible biopolymers such as the actin cytoskeleton govern the mechanical behavior of living cells. Semiflexible biopolymers nonlinearly stiffen in response to mechanical loads, whereas the crosslinker dynamics…
We propose an experiment to demonstrate spontaneous ordering and symmetry breaking of kinesin-driven microtubules confined to an optical trap. Calculations involving the feasibility of such an experiment are first performed which analyze…
We report here a new entropic mechanism of protein thermostability due to residual dynamics of rotamer isomerization in native state. All-atom simulations show that Lysines have much greater number of accessible rotamers than Arginines in…
Key enzymatic processes in biology use the nonequilibrium error correction mechanism called kinetic proofreading to enhance their specificity. Kinetic proofreading typically requires several dedicated structural features in the enzyme, such…
We study the high-frequency micro-mechanical response of suspensions composed by cardiac and skeletal muscle myosin by optical trapping interferometry. We observe that in low ionic strength solutions upon the addition of magnesium adenosine…
Biological nanomachines are nanometer-size macromolecular complexes that catalyze chemical reactions in the presence of substrate molecules. The catalytic functions carried out by such nanomachines in the cytoplasm, and biological membranes…
The assumption of linear response of protein molecules to thermal noise or structural perturbations, such as ligand binding or detachment, is broadly used in the studies of protein dynamics. Conformational motions in proteins are…
Histone octamers show a heat-induced mobility along DNA. Recent theoretical studies have established two mechanisms that are qualitatively and quantitatively compatible with in vitro experiments on nucleosome sliding: Octamer repositiong…
KIF1A, a processive single headed kinesin superfamily motor, hydrolyzes Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to move along a filamentous track called microtubule. The stochastic movement of KIF1A on the track is characterized by an alternating…
Post-transductional modifications tune the functions of proteins and regulate the collective dynamics of biochemical networks that determine how cells respond to environmental signals. For example, protein phosphorylation and nitrosylation…
Metabolic reactions of single-cell organisms are routinely observed to become dispensable or even incapable of carrying activity under certain circumstances. Yet, the mechanisms as well as the range of conditions and phenotypes associated…
Cytoskeletal active nematics exhibit striking non-equilibrium dynamics that are powered by energy-consuming molecular motors. To gain insight into the structure and mechanics of these materials, we design programmable clusters in which…