Related papers: Pulling cargo increases the precision of molecular…
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…
Marine microorganisms often reach high swimming speeds, either to take advantage of evanescent nutrient patches or to beat Brownian forces. Since this implies that a sizable part of their energetic budget must be allocated to motion, it is…
Bacterial microcompartments are large, roughly icosahedral shells that assemble around enzymes and reactants involved in certain metabolic pathways in bacteria. Motivated by microcompartment assembly, we use coarse-grained computational and…
We suggest a theoretical description of the force-induced translocation dynamics of a polymer chain through a nanopore. Our consideration is based on the tensile (Pincus) blob picture of a pulled chain and the notion of propagating front of…
Multivalent cargo that can interact with substrates via multiple interaction sites exhibit shared characteristics despite being found in different systems at different length-scales. Here, a general analytical model has been developed that…
Intracellular transport processes driven by molecular motors can be described by stochastic lattice models of self-driven particles. Here we focus on bidirectional transport models excluding the exchange of particles on the same track. We…
The combination of protrusions and retractions in the movement of polarized cells leads to understand the effect of possible synchronisation between the two ends of the cells. This synchronisation, in turn, could lead to different dynamics…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
In systems possessing spatial or dynamical symmetry breaking, Brownian motion combined with symmetric external input signals, deterministic or random, alike, can assist directed motion of particles at the submicron scales. In such cases,…
The motor part of a crawling eukaryotic cell can be represented schematically as an active continuum layer. The main active processes in this layer are protrusion, originating from non-equilibrium polymerization of actin fibers,…
Understanding the organization of collective motion in biological systems is an ongoing challenge. In this Paper we consider a minimal model of self-propelled particles with variable speed. Inspired by experimental data from schooling fish,…
We investigate the efficiency of systems of molecular motors operating at maximum power. We consider two models of kinesin motors on a microtubule: for both the simplified and the detailed model, we find that the many-body exclusion effect…
We study the conformation and dynamics of a single polymer chain that is pulled by a constant force applied at its one end with the other end free. Such a situation is relevant to the growing technology of manipulating individual…
The interior of a living cell is an active, fluctuating, and crowded environment. Yet, it maintains a high level of coherent organization, which is readily apparent in the intracellular transport network. Membrane-bound compartments called…
Molecular motion through pores plays a crucial role in various natural and industrial processes. One of the most fascinating features of biological channel-facilitated transport is a stochastic gating process, when the channels dynamically…
Transport through molecular contacts with a sluggish intramolecular vibrational mode strongly coupled to excess charges is studied far from equilibrium. A Born-Oppenheimer approximation in steady state reveals voltage dependent energy…
Active transport of biomolecules assisted by motor proteins is imperative for the proper functioning of cellular activities. Inspired by the diffusion of active agents in crowded cellular channels, we computationally investigate the…
Active particles contain internal degrees of freedom with the ability to take in and dissipate energy and, in the process, execute systematic movement. Examples include all living organisms and their motile constituents such as molecular…
Inclusions, or defects, moving at constant velocity through free classical fields are shown to be subject to a drag force which depends on the field dynamics and the coupling of the inclusion to the field. The results are used to predict…
Intracellular components explore the cytoplasm via active motor-driven transport in conjunction with passive diffusion. We model the motion of organelles in narrow tubular cells using analytical techniques and numerical simulations to study…