Related papers: Tunable dynamics of microtubule based active isotr…
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…
Microtubules self-organize to form part of the cellular cytoskeleton. They give cells their shape and play a crucial role in cell division and intracellular transport. Strikingly, microtubules driven by motor proteins reorganize into stable…
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…
Recent experiments on active materials, such as dense bacterial suspensions and microtubule-kinesin motor mixtures, show a promising potential for achieving self-sustained flows. However, to develop active microfluidics it is necessary to…
Analytical formulas for effective drift, diffusivity, run times, and run lengths are derived for an intracellular transport system consisting of a cargo attached to two cooperative but not identical molecular motors (for example, kinesin-1…
Biological activity gives rise to non-equilibrium fluctuations in the cytoplasm of cells; however, there are few methods to directly measure these fluctuations. Using a reconstituted actin cytoskeleton, we show that the bending dynamics of…
We study analytically and numerically a generic continuum model of an isotropic active solid with internal stresses generated by non-equilibrium `active' mechano-chemical reactions. Our analysis shows that the gel can be tuned through three…
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…
The cytoskeleton is an active composite of filamentous proteins that dictates diverse mechanical properties and processes in eukaryotic cells by generating forces and autonomously restructuring itself. Enzymatic motors that act on the…
Actin filaments, crosslinkers and myosin molecular motors form contractile networks. For instance, the cell cortex is a thin network below the cell membrane ; contraction of the cell cortex allows cells to round up during cell division.…
Three problems in the statistical mechanics of models for an assembly of molecular motors interacting with cytoskeletal filaments are reviewed. First, a description of the hydrodynamical behaviour of density-density correlations in…
Conventional kinesin is a homodimeric motor protein that unidirectionally transports organelles along filamentous microtubule (MT) by hydrolyzing ATP molecules. This study shows that the load modulations of ATP turnover and head diffusion…
Myosin II molecular motors slide actin filaments relatively to each other and are essential for force generation, motility and mechanosensing in animal cells. For non-muscle cells, evolution has resulted in three different isoforms, which…
Single molecular motor kinesin harnesses thermal and non-thermal fluctuations to transport various cargoes along microtubules, converting chemical energy to directed movements. To describe the non-thermal fluctuations generated by the…
Intracellular transport of vesicular cargos, organelles, and other macromolecules is an essential process to move large items through a crowded, and inhomogeneous cellular environment. In an effort to dissect the fundamental effects of…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
Kinesin motors can induce a buckling instability in a microtubule with a fixed minus end. Here we show that by modifying the surface with a protein-repellent functionalization and using clusters of kinesin motors, the microtubule can…
Microtubule dynamics is largely influenced by nucleotide hydrolysis and the resultant tubulin configuration changes. The GTP cap model has been proposed to interpret the stabilizing mechanism of microtubule growth from the view of…
The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile…
A variety of complex mechanisms, from chemical reaction pathways to active fluctuations, orchestrate molecular transport in intracellular environments. Despite significant recent progress in visualizing and probing these processes, little…