Related papers: Understanding Mechanochemical Coupling in Kinesins…
Motor enzymes catalyze chemical reactions, like the hydrolysis of ATP, and in the process they also perform work. Recent studies indicate that motor enzymes perform work with specific intermediate steps in their catalyzed reactions,…
The cytoskeleton is regulated by a plethora of enzymes that influence the stability and dynamics of cytoskeletal filaments. Molecular motors of the kinesin-8 protein family depolymerise microtubules in a length-dependent manner, and…
Dynein motors exhibit catch bonding, where the unbinding rate of the motors from microtubule filaments decreases with increasing opposing load. The implications of this catch bond on the transport properties of dynein-driven cargo are yet…
We model the dynamics of a processive or rotary molecular motor using a renewal processes, in line with the work initiated by Svoboda, Mitra and Block. We apply a functional technique to compute different types of multiple-time correlation…
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…
Tethered particle motion (TPM) --- the motion of a micro- or nanoparticle tethered to a substrate by a macromolecule --- is a system that has proven extremely useful for its ability to reveal physical features of the tether, because the…
How ATP binding initiates the docking process of kinesin's neck linker is a key question in understanding kinesin mechanism. It is believed that the formation of an extra turn structure by the first three amino acids of neck linker (LYS325,…
Many biological processes involve the action of molecular motors that interact with the cell cytoskeleton. Some processes, such as the transport of cargoes is achieved mainly by the action of individual motors. Other, such as cell motility…
The secretion of vesicles for intracellular transport often rely on the aggregation of specialized membrane-bound proteins into a coat able to curve cell membranes. The nucleation and growth of a protein coat is a kinetic process that…
Along a microtubule, certain active motors propel themselves in one direction whereas others propel themselves in the opposite direction. For example, the cargo transporting motor proteins dynein and kinesin propel themselves towards the…
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…
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…
The mathematical formulation of the model for molecular movement of single motor proteins driven by cyclic biochemical reactions in an aqueous environment leads to a drifted Brownian motion characterized by coupled diffusion equations. In…
We demonstrate asymmetric enzyme kinetics of a biomolecular motor F1-ATPase between synthesis and hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Our experiments show that ATP hydrolysis follows Michaelis-Menten kinetics, but ATP synthesis,…
Power-law dwell times have been observed for molecular motors in living cells, but the origins of these trapped states are not known. We introduce a minimal model of motors moving on a two-dimensional network of filaments, and simulations…
Molecular motors play pivotal roles in organizing the interior of cells. A motor efficient in cargo transport would move along cytoskeletal filaments with a high speed and a minimal error in transport distance (or time) while consuming a…
Trajectories of a signal that fluctuates between two states which originate from single molecule activities have become ubiquitous. Common examples are trajectories of ionic flux through individual membrane-channels, and of photon counts…
Kinesin motors can induce a buckling instability in a microtubule with a fixed minus end. Here we show that by modifying the surface with a protein-repellent functionalization and using clusters of kinesin motors, the microtubule can…
The rotary sequential hydrolysis of metabolic machine F1-ATPase is a prominent feature to reveal high coordination among multiple chemical sites on the stator F1 ring, which also contributes to tight coupling between the chemical reaction…
In this paper we report, clarify and broaden various recent efforts to complement the chemistry-centered models of force generation in muscles by mechanics-centered models. The physical mechanisms of interest can be grouped into two…