Related papers: Motor-driven microtubule diffusion in a photobleac…
Microtubule (MT) radial arrays or asters establish the internal topology of a cell by interacting with organelles and molecular motors. We proceed to understand the general pattern forming potential of aster-motor systems using a…
We analyze experimental observations of microtubules undergoing small fluctuations about a "balance point" when mixed in solution of two different kinesin motor proteins, KLP61F and Ncd. It has been proposed that the microtubule movement is…
This paper describes an investigation into part of the mechanical mechanisms underlying the formation of mitotic spindle, the cellular machinery responsible for chromosomal separation during cell division. In normal eukaryotic cells,…
Diffusion models have demonstrated exceptional performances in various fields of generative modeling, but suffer from slow sampling speed due to their iterative nature. While this issue is being addressed in continuous domains, discrete…
The origin of biological motion can be traced back to the function of molecular motor proteins. Cytoplasmic dynein and kinesin transport organelles within our cells moving along a polymeric filament, the microtubule. The motion of the…
Multiple experiments show that various submicron particles such as magnetosomes, RNA messengers, viruses, and even much smaller nanoparticles such as globular proteins diffuse anomalously slow in viscoelastic cytosol of living cells. Hence,…
Theoretical analysis, which maps single molecule time trajectories of a molecular motor onto unicyclic Markov processes, allows us to evaluate the heat dissipated from the motor and to elucidate its dependence on the mean velocity and…
Cytoskeletal networks can repair defects to maintain structural integrity. However, the mechanisms and dynamics of defect merging remain poorly understood. Here we report a geometry-tunable merging mechanism in microtubule-motor networks…
Microtubules are a major component of the cytoskeleton distinguished by highly dynamic behavior both in vitro and in vivo. We propose a general mathematical model that accounts for the growth, catastrophe, rescue and nucleation processes in…
Molecular diffusion measurements are widely used to probe microstructure in materials and living organisms noninvasively. The precise relation of diffusion metrics to microstructure remains a major challenge: In complex samples, it is often…
We extend the notions of multipole and subsystem symmetries to more general {\it spatially modulated} symmetries. We uncover two instances with exponential and (quasi)-periodic modulations, and provide simple microscopic models in one, two…
Microtubules host dense ultraviolet-absorbing aromatic networks, suggesting an opportunity to engineer their optical response for biotechnology. Here we assess the feasibility of tuning microtubule fluorescence by combining an excitonic…
Intracellular cargo transport can arise from passive diffusion, active motor-driven transport along cytoskeletal filament networks, and passive advection by fluid flows entrained by such motor/cargo motion. Active and advective transport…
We derive a model describing spatio-temporal organization of an array of microtubules interacting via molecular motors. Starting from a stochastic model of inelastic polar rods with a generic anisotropic interaction kernel we obtain a set…
Microtubules are filamentous tubular protein polymers which are essential for a range of cellular behaviour, and are generally straight over micron length scales. However, in some gliding assays, where microtubules move over a carpet of…
Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…
Epithelial cell clusters often move collectively on a substrate. Mechanical signals play a major role in organizing this behavior. There are a number of experimental observations in these systems which await a comprehensive explanation.…
The plant microtubule cortical array is a striking feature of all growing plant cells. It consists of a more or less homogeneously distributed array of highly aligned microtubules connected to the inner side of the plasma membrane and…
Molecular motors interacting with cytoskeletal filaments undergo peculiar random walks consisting of alternating sequences of directed movements along the filaments and diffusive motion in the surrounding solution. An ensemble of motors is…
Movements of molecular motors on cytoskeletal filaments are described by directed walks on a line. Detachment from this line is allowed to occur with a small probability. Motion in the surrounding fluid is described by symmetric random…