Related papers: Motor-driven microtubule diffusion in a photobleac…
Intracellular bidirectional transport of cargo on microtubule filaments is achieved by the collective action of oppositely directed dynein and kinesin motors. Experiments have found that in certain cases, inhibiting the activity of one type…
Active materials take advantage of their internal sources of energy to self-organize in an automated manner. This feature provides a novel opportunity to design micron-scale machines with minimal required control. However, self-organization…
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…
The aim of this paper is to develop suitable models for the phenomenon of cell blebbing, which allow for computational predictions of mechanical effects including the crucial interaction of the cell membrane and the actin cortex. For this…
Mechanical forces generated by myosin II molecular motors drive diverse cellular processes, most notably shape change, division and locomotion. These forces may be transmitted over long range through the cytoskeletal medium - a disordered,…
Connecting the large-scale emergent behaviors of active materials to the microscopic properties of their constituents is a challenge due to a lack of data on the multiscale dynamics and structure of such systems. We approach this problem by…
Biological systems achieve precise control over ambient fluids through the self-organization of active protein structures including flagella, cilia, and cytoskeletal networks. In active structures individual proteins consume chemical energy…
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…
The movement of motor particles consisting of one or several molecular motors bound to a cargo particle is studied theoretically. The particles move on patterns of immobilized filaments. Several patterns are described for which the motor…
Actomyosin networks are major structural components of the cell. They provide mechanical integrity and allow dynamic remodeling of eukaryotic cells, self-organizing into the diverse patterns essential for development. We provide a…
A common type of cytoskeletal morphology involves multiple converging microbutubules with their minus ends collected and stabilized by a microtubule organizing center (MTOC) in the interior of the cell. This arrangement enables the…
The stationary states of systems with many molecular motors are studied theoretically for uniaxial and centered (aster-like) arrangements of cytoskeletal filaments using Monte Carlo simulations and a two-state model. Mutual exclusion of…
The behavior of particles driven through a narrow constriction is investigated in experiment and simulation. The system of particles adapts to the confining potentials and the interaction energies by a self-consistent arrangement of the…
Transport at microscopic length scales is essential in biological systems and various technologies, including microfluidics. Recent experiments achieved self-organized transport phenomena in microtubule active matter using light to modulate…
Inside cells, various cargos are transported by teams of molecular motors. Intriguingly, the motors involved generally have opposite pulling directions, and the resulting cargo dynamics is a biased stochastic motion. It is an open question…
Diffusive transport of small molecules within the internal structures of biological and synthetic material systems is complex because the crowded environment presents chemical and physical barriers to mobility. We explored this mobility…
The kinesin superfamily of motor proteins is a major driver of anterograde transport of vesicles and organelles within eukaryotic cells via microtubules. Numerous studies have elucidated the step-size, velocities, forces, and navigation…
The diffusion of a system of ferromagnetic dipoles confined in a quasi-one-dimensional parabolic trap is studied using Brownian dynamics simulations. We show that the dynamics of the system is tunable by an in-plane external homogeneous…
In active matter systems, self-propelled particles can self-organize to undergo collective motion, leading to persistent dynamical behavior out of equilibrium. In cells, cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins self-organize into complex…
How thousands of microtubules and molecular motors self-organize into spindles remains poorly understood. By combining static, nanometer-resolution, large-scale electron tomography reconstructions and dynamic, optical-resolution, polarized…