Related papers: Crowding of molecular motors determines microtubul…
We study the mechanical and thermodynamic properties of different traffic models for kinesin which are relevant in biological and experimental contexts. We find that motor-motor interactions play a fundamental role by enhancing the…
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…
Microtubules are highly regulated dynamic elements of the cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells. One of the regulation mechanisms observed in living cells is the severing by the proteins katanin and spastin. We introduce a model for the dynamics…
The looping of polymers such as DNA is a fundamental process in the molecular biology of living cells, whose interior is characterised by a high degree of molecular crowding. We here investigate in detail the looping dynamics of flexible…
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…
Microtubules (MTs) are cytoplasmic protein polymers that are essential for fundamental cellular processes including the maintenance of cell shape, organelle transport and formation of the mitotic spindle. Microtubule dynamic instability is…
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) abound in cellular regulation. Their interactions are often transitory and highly sensitive to salt concentration and posttranslational modifications. However, little is known about the effect of…
The activity of biological cells is primarily based on chemical reactions and typically modeled as a reaction-diffusion system. Cells are, however, highly crowded with macromolecules, including a variety of molecular machines such as…
Assembly and stability of mitotic spindle is governed by the interplay of various intra-cellular forces, e.g. the forces generated by motor proteins by sliding overlapping anti-parallel microtubules (MTs) polymerized from the opposite…
Formation of a pseudoknot in the conserved RNA core domain in the ribonucleoprotein human telomerase is required for function. In vitro experiments show that the pseudoknot (PK) is in equilibrium with an extended hairpin (HP) structure. We…
In nature interactions between biopolymers and motor proteins give rise to biologically essential emergent behaviours. Besides cytoskeleton mechanics, active nematics arise from such interactions. Here we present a study on 3D active…
The coupling between the depolymerization of microtubules (MTs) and the motion of the Dam1 ring complex is now thought to play an important role in the generation of forces during mitosis. Our current understanding of this motion is based…
The cellular cytoskeleton is an active material, driven out of equilibrium by molecular motor proteins. It is not understood how the collective behaviors of cytoskeletal networks emerge from the properties of the network's constituent motor…
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…
Transport of intracellular cargo is often mediated by teams of molecular motors that function in a chaotic environment under varying conditions. We show that the motors have unique steady state behavior which enables transport modalities…
The mitotic spindle partitions chromosomes during cell division by connecting the poles to kinetochores through microtubules (MTs). Their plus-ends, facing the chromosomes, exhibit dynamic instability, which is critical for proper…
The effect of crowding on the run-and-tumble dynamics of swimmers such as bacteria is studied using a discrete lattice model of mutually excluding particles that move with constant velocity along a direction that is randomized at a rate…
The origin of biological motion can be traced back to the function of molecular motor proteins. Cytoplasmic dynein and kinesin transport organelles within our cells moving along a polymeric filament, the microtubule. The motion of the…
Force-driven translocation of a macromolecule through a nanopore is investigated by taking into account the monomer-pore friction as well as the "crowding" of monomers on the {\it trans} - side of the membrane which counterbalance the…
Diffusive transport of small molecules within the internal structures of biological and synthetic material systems is complex because the crowded environment presents chemical and physical barriers to mobility. We explored this mobility…