Related papers: Pulling cargo increases the precision of molecular…
Collective cell migration plays a central role in tissue development, morphogenesis, wound repair and cancer progression. With the growing realization that physical forces mediate cell motility in development and physiology, a key…
Quantifying the outcomes of cells collisions is a crucial step in building the foundations of a kinetic theory of living matter. Here, we develop a mechanical theory of such collisions by first representing individual cells as extended…
Nuclear pore complexes are constantly confronted by large fluxes of macromolecules and macromolecular complexes that need to get into and out of the nucleus. Such bi-directional traffic occurring in a narrow channel can easily lead to…
The effect of sequence heterogeneity on polynucleotide translocation across a pore and on simple models of molecular motors such as helicases, DNA polymerase/exonuclease and RNA polymerase is studied in detail. Pore translocation of RNA or…
In recent literature there has been a lot of interest in the phenomena of noise induced transport in the absence of an average bias occurring in spatially periodic systems far from equilibrium. One of the main motivations in this area is to…
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…
Biomolecules stochastically occupy different possible configurations with probabilities given by non-equilibrium steady-state distributions. These distributions are determined by the transition rate constants between different…
Bacteria can adjust the structure of colonies and biofilms to enhance their survival rate under external stress. Here, we explore the link between bacterial interaction forces and colony structure. We show that the activity of extracellular…
The performance of a molecular motor, characterized by its power output and energy efficiency, is investigated in the motor design space spanned by the stepping rate function and the motor-track interaction potential. Analytic results and…
Like their larger micron-scale counterparts, {\AA}ngstr\"om-scale chemically self-propelled motors use asymmetric catalytic activity to produce self-generated concentration gradients that lead to directed motion. Unlike their micron-scale…
Experimental studies of systems containing active proteins that undergo conformational changes driven by catalytic chemical reactions have shown that the diffusion coefficients of passive tracer particles and active molecules are larger…
Fluctuations in the physical properties of biological machines are inextricably linked to their functions. Distributions of run-lengths and velocities of processive molecular motors, like kinesin-1, are accessible through single molecule…
The molecular motor myosin V exhibits a wide repertoire of pathways during the stepping process, which is intimately connected to its biological function. The best understood of these is hand-over-hand stepping by a swinging lever arm…
We introduce a model for stochastic transport on a one-dimensional substrate with particles assuming different conformations during their stepping cycles. These conformations correspond to different footprints on the substrate: in order to…
Motor enzymes are remarkable molecular machines that use the energy derived from the hydrolysis of a nucleoside triphosphate to generate mechanical movement, achieved through different steps that constitute their kinetic cycle. These…
Biofilament-motor protein complexes are ubiquitous in biology and drive the transport of cargo vital for many fundamental cellular processes. As they move, motor proteins exert compressive forces on the filaments to which they are attached,…
We consider a molecular machine described as a Brownian particle diffusing in a tilted periodic potential. We evaluate the absorbed and released power of the machine as a function of the applied molecular and chemical forces, by using the…
In a single molecule assay, the motion of a molecular motor is often inferred from measuring the stochastic trajectory of a large probe particle attached to it. We discuss a simple model for this generic set-up taking into account…
Molecular motors are macromolecular complexes which use some form of input energy to perform mechanical work. The filamentary tracks, on which these motors move, are made of either proteins (e.g., microtubules) or nucleic acids (DNA or…
Microscopic biological systems operate far from equilibrium, are subject to strong fluctuations, and are composed of many coupled components with interactions varying in nature and strength. Researchers are actively investigating the…