Related papers: Pulling cargo increases the precision of molecular…
Biological systems perform an astonishing array of dynamical processes -- including development and repair, regulation, behavior and motor control, sensing and signaling, and adaptation, among others. Powered by the transduction of stored…
Cytoskeletal motor proteins are involved in major intracellular transport processes which are vital for maintaining appropriate cellular function. The motor exhibits distinct states of motility: active motion along filaments, and…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
We discuss effects of the stepping kinetics of molecular motors on their traffic behavior on crowded filaments using a simple two-state chemomechanical cycle. While the general traffic behavior is quite robust with respect to the detailed…
A microtubule (MT) is a hollow tube of approximately 25 nm diameter. The two ends of the tube are dissimilar and are designated as `plus' and `minus' ends. Motivated by the collective push and pull exerted by a bundle of MTs during…
The collective dynamics of $N$ weakly coupled processive molecular motors are considered theoretically. We show, using a discrete lattice model, that the velocity-force curves strongly depend on the effective dynamic interactions between…
The quality of biomolecular simulations critically depends on the accuracy of the force field used to calculate the potential energy of the molecular configurations. Currently, most simulations employ non-polarisable force fields, which…
An open problem in numerical analysis is to explain why molecular dynamics works. The difficulty is that numerical trajectories are only accurate for very short times, whereas the simulations are performed over long time intervals. It is…
Enzymatic molecules that actively support many cellular processes, including transport, cell division and cell motility, are known as motor proteins or molecular motors. Experimental studies indicate that they interact with each other and…
We obtain a numerical solution for the synchronous motion of two spheres moving in viscous fluid. We find that for a given amount of work performed, the final distance travelled by each sphere is increased by the presence of the other…
The dynamics of active matter driven by interacting molecular motors has a non-potential structure at the local scale. However, we show that there exists a quasi-potential effectively describing the collective self-organization of the…
Cell is the structural and functional unit of life. This Resource Letter serves as a guide to the literature on nano-machines which drive not only intracellular movements, but also motility of the cell. These machines are usually proteins…
Many recently introduced enhanced sampling techniques are based on biasing coarse descriptors (collective variables) of a molecular system on the fly. Sometimes the calculation of such collective variables is expensive and becomes a…
The living cell expends energetic and material resources to reliably process information from its environment. To do so, it utilises unreliable molecular circuitry that is subject to thermal and other fluctuations. Here, we argue that…
An active swimmer can tow a passive cargo by binding it to form a self-propelling dimer. The orientation of the cargo relative to the axis of the active dimer's head is determined by the hydrodynamic interactions associated with the…
Motor proteins display widely different stepping patterns as they move on microtubule tracks, from the deterministic linear or helical motion performed by the protein kinesin to the uncoordinated random steps made by dynein. How these…
The bacterial flagellar motor drives the rotation of flagellar filaments and enables many species of bacteria to swim. Torque is generated by interaction of stator units, anchored to the peptidoglycan cell wall, with the rotor. Recent…
Molecular motors are in charge of almost every process in the life cycle of cells, such as protein synthesis, DNA replication, and cell locomotion, hence being of crucial importance for understanding the cellular dynamics. However, given…
Dynamic Monte Carlo simulations are used to study coupled transport (co-transport) through sub-nanometer-diameter pores. In this classic Hodgkin-Keynes mechanism, an ion species uses the large flux of an abundant ion species to move against…
Cell alignment often forms nematic order, which can lead to anomalous collective cell flow due to the so-called active force. Although it is appreciated that cell migration is driven by traction force, a quantitative evaluation of the…