Related papers: Pulling cargo increases the precision of molecular…

Molecular machines are stochastic systems that catalyze the energetic processes keeping living cells alive and structured. Inspired by the examples of F1-ATP synthase and the bacterial flagellum, we present a minimal model of an externally…

We scrutinize the temporally-resolved speed of active cargo transport in living cells, and show intermittent bursting motions. These nonlinear fluctuations follow a scaling law over several decades of time and space, the statistical…

Mechanobiology is gaining more and more traction as the fundamental role of physical forces in biological function becomes clearer. Forces at the microscale are often measured indirectly using inverse problems such as Traction Force…

We propose and analyze a mathematical model of cargo transport by non-processive molecular motors. In our model, the motors change states by random discrete events (corresponding to stepping and binding/unbinding), while the cargo position…

Many biological processes are supported by special molecules, called motor proteins or molecular motors, that transport cellular cargoes along linear protein filaments and can reversibly associate to their tracks. Stimulated by these…

We discover a new type of nonequilibrium phase transition in a model of chromatin dynamics, which accounts for the coherent motions that have been observed in experiment. The coherent motion is due to the long-range cooperation of molecular…

Active diffusion of intracellular components is emerging as an important process in cell biology. This process is mediated by complex assemblies of molecular motors and cytoskeletal filaments that drive force generation in the cytoplasm and…

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are used to determine the diffusion coefficients, electrophoretic mobilities and electrical conductivity of a charged colloidal suspension in the salt-free regime as a function of the colloid charge. The…

Charge migration is a ubiquitous phenomenon with profound implications throughout many areas of chemistry, physics, biology and materials science. The long-term vision of designing functional materials with tailored molecular scale…

Recent experiments on the bacterial flagellar motor have shown that the structure of this nanomachine, which drives locomotion in a wide range of bacterial species, is more dynamic than previously believed. Specifically, the number of…

Within living cells, the transport of cargo is accomplished by groups of molecular motors. Such collective transport could utilize mechanisms which emerge from inter-motor interactions in ways that are yet to be fully understood. Here we…

The more we learn about the cytoplasm of cells, the more we realise that the cytoplasm is not uniform but instead is highly inhomogeneous. In any inhomogeneous solution, there are concentration gradients, and particles move either up or…

Living systems efficiently use chemical fuel to do work, process information, and assemble patterns despite thermal noise. Whether high efficiency arises from general principles or specific fine-tuning is unknown. Here, applying a recent…

Intracellular transport is an essential function in eucaryotic cells, facilitated by motor proteins - proteins converting chemical energy into kinetic energy. It is known that motor proteins work in teams enabling unidirectional and…

The dynamics of molecular motors which occasionally detach from a heterogeneous track like DNA or RNA is considered. Motivated by recent single molecule experiments, we study a simple model for a motor moving along a disordered track using…

The transport by molecular motors along cytoskeletal filaments is studied theoretically in the presence of static defects. The movements of single motors are described as biased random walks along the filament as well as binding to and…

Bidirectional variants of stochastic many particle models for transport by molecular motors show a strong tendency to form macroscopic clusters on static lattices. Inspired by the fact that the microscopic tracks for molecular motors are…

Biomolecular machines consume free energy to break symmetry and make directed progress. Nonequilibrium ATP concentrations are the typical free energy source, with one cycle of a molecular machine consuming a certain number of ATP, providing…

We demonstrate the phenomenon of cumulative inertia in intracellular transport involving multiple motor proteins in human epithelial cells by measuring the empirical survival probability of cargoes on the microtubule and their detachment…

Microtubules are protein polymers that form "molecular highways" for long-range transport within living cells. Molecular motors actively step along microtubules to shuttle cellular materials between the nucleus and the cell periphery; this…