Related papers: Collective cargo hauling by a bundle of parallel m…
As a model for molecular traffic control (MTC) we investigate the diffusion of hard core particles in crossed single-file systems. We consider a square lattice of single-files being connected to external reservoirs. The (vertical)…
Microtubule dynamic instability arises from the hydrolysis of GTP bound to the beta-monomer of the tubulin dimer. The conformational change induced by hydrolysis is unknown, but microtubules disassemble into protofilaments of GDP-bound…
A ubiquitous observation in cell biology is that diffusion of macromolecules and organelles is anomalous, and a description simply based on the conventional diffusion equation with diffusion constants measured in dilute solution fails. This…
Molecular motors are specialized proteins which perform active, directed transport of cellular cargoes on cytoskeletal filaments. In many cases, cargo motion powered by motor proteins is found to be bidirectional, and may be viewed as a…
Tracking experiments in dense biological tissues reveal a diversity of sources f or local energy injection at the cell scale. The effect of cell motility has been largely studied, but much less is known abo ut the effect of the observed…
Biopolymers serve as one-dimensional tracks on which motor proteins move to perform their biological roles. Motor protein phenomena have inspired theoretical models of one-dimensional transport, crowding, and jamming. Experiments studying…
Coordinated rotational motion is an intriguing, yet still elusive mode of collective cell migration, which is relevant in pathological and morphogenetic processes. Most of the studies on this topic have been carried out on confined…
We analyze experimental observations of microtubules undergoing small fluctuations about a "balance point" when mixed in solution of two different kinesin motor proteins, KLP61F and Ncd. It has been proposed that the microtubule movement is…
Molecular motors power directed transport of cargoes within cells. Even if a single motor is sufficient to transport a cargo, motors often cooperate in small teams. We discuss the cooperative cargo transport by several motors theoretically…
The cargo motion in living cells transported by two species of motor protein with different intrinsic directionality is discussed in this study. Similar to single motor movement, cargo steps forward and backward along microtubule…
Collective dynamics and force generation by cytoskeletal filaments are crucial in many cellular processes. Investigating growth dynamics of a bundle of N independent cytoskeletal filaments pushing against a wall, we show that chemical…
Self-organization of kinesin-driven, microtubule-based 3D active fluids relies on the collective dynamics of single microtubules. However, the connection between macroscopic fluid flows and microscopic motion of microtubules remains…
The dynamic behavior of microtubules in solution can be strongly modified by interactions with walls or other structures. We examine here a microtubule growth model where the increase in size of the plus-end is perturbed by collisions with…
As a complementary tool to nanofluidics, biomolecular based transport is envisioned for nanotechnological devices. We report a new method for guiding microtubule shuttles on multi-walled carbon nanotube tracks, aligned by dielectrophoresis…
This paper describes an investigation into part of the mechanical mechanisms underlying the formation of mitotic spindle, the cellular machinery responsible for chromosomal separation during cell division. In normal eukaryotic cells,…
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…
Here we generalize our previous model of molecular motors trafficking subdiffusing cargos in viscoelastic cytosol by (i) including mechanochemical coupling between cyclic conformational fluctuations of the motor protein driven by the…
In various cellular processes, biofilaments like F-actin and F-tubulin are able to exploit chemical energy associated to polymerization to perform mechanical work against an external load. The force-velocity relationship quantitatively…
Size segregation in bedload transport is studied numerically with a coupled fluid-discrete element model. Starting from an initial deposit of small spherical particles on top of a large particle bed, the segregation dynamics of the bed is…
We study the dynamics and phase behaviour of a dry suspension of microtubules and molecular motors. We obtain a set of continuum equations by rigorously coarse graining a microscopic model where motor-induced interactions lead to parallel…