Related papers: Microtubule Length-Regulation by Molecular Motors
The composite cytoskeleton, comprising interacting networks of semiflexible actin and rigid microtubules, actively generates forces and restructures using motor proteins such as myosins to enable key mechanical processes including cell…
KIF1A kinesins are single-headed motor proteins which move on cylindrical nano-tubes called microtubules (MT). A normal MT consists of 13 protofilaments on which the equispaced motor binding sites form a periodic array. The collective…
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,…
Two headed motor proteins, such as kinesin and dynein, hidrolyze environmental ATP in order to propel unidirectionally along cytoskeletal filaments such as microtubules. In the case of kinesin, protein heads bind primarily on the alpha…
Processive molecular motors which drive the traffic of organelles in cells move in a directed way along cytoskeletal filaments. On large time scales, they perform motor walks, i.e., peculiar random walks which arise from the repeated…
Nonequilibrium energetics of single molecule translational motor kinesin was investigated by measuring heat dissipation from the violation of the fluctuation-response relation of a probe attached to the motor using optical tweezers. The sum…
Intracellular transport is based on molecular motors that pull cargos along cytoskeletal filaments. One motor species always moves in one direction, e.g. conventional kinesin moves to the microtubule plus end, while cytoplasmic dynein moves…
Molecular motors are found throughout the cells of the human body, and have many different and important roles. These micro-machines move along filament tracks, and have the ability to convert chemical energy into mechanical work that…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
We propose an alternative mechanism for intracellular cargo transport which results from motor induced longitudinal fluctuations of cytoskeletal microtubules (MT). The longitudinal fluctuations combined with transient cargo binding to the…
We present a systematic study of the influence of cell geometry on the orientational distribution of microtubules (MTs) nucleated from a single microtubule organizing center (MTOC). For simplicity we consider an elliptical cell geometry, a…
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…
Dynamic instability of microtubules is considered using frameworks of non-linear thermodynamics and non-equilibrium reaction-diffusion systems. Stochastic assembly/disassembly phases in the polymerization dynamics of microtubules are…
The effect of sequence heterogeneity on the dynamics of molecular motors is reviewed and analyzed using a set of recently introduced lattice models. First, we review results for the influence of heterogenous tracks such as a single-strand…
Cortical actin networks are highly dynamic and play critical roles in shaping the mechanical properties of cells. The actin cytoskeleton undergoes significant reorganization over the course of the cell cycle, when cortical actin transitions…
Microtubules are hollow cylindrical polymers composed of the highly negatively-charged (~23e), high dipole moment (1750 D) protein a,b-tubulin. While the roles of microtubules in chromosomal segregation, macromolecular transport and cell…
Can the different causes for disruption of intracellular transport be traced from the trajectories of the molecular motors on the cytoskeletal filaments? We will attempt to answer this important question in a Monte Carlo model of…
Kinesin-5, also known as Eg5 in vertebrates is a processive motor with 4 heads, which moves on filamentous tracks called microtubules. The basic function of Kinesin-5 is to slide apart two anti-parallel microtubules by simultaneously…
We present a model of an ATP-fueled molecular machine which push a polymer through a pore channel. The machine acts between two levels (working-waiting), and the working one remains active for a fixed time giving a constant force. The…
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…