Related papers: Force and Motion Generation of Molecular Motors: A…
Autonomous oscillations in biological systems may have a biochemical origin or result from an interplay between force-generating and visco-elastic elements. In molecular motor assemblies the force-generating elements are molecular engines…
We analyze the role of the force-dependent kinetics of motor proteins in the stability of antiparallel arrays of polar filaments, such as those in the mitotic spindle. We determine the possible stable structures and show that there exists…
We study a Markov random process describing a muscle molecular motor behavior. Every motor is either bound up with a thin filament or unbound. In the bound state the motor creates a force proportional to its displacement from the neutral…
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 perform active movements along cytoskeletal filaments and drive the traffic of organelles and other cargo particles in cells. In contrast to the macroscopic traffic of cars, however, the traffic of molecular motors is…
We model analytically the dynamics of a cytoskeletal filament in a motility assay. The filament is described as rigid rod free to slide in two dimensions. The motor proteins consist of polymeric tails tethered to the plane and modeled as…
Biological transport is supported by collective dynamics of enzymatic molecules that are called motor proteins or molecular motors. Experiments suggest that motor proteins interact locally via short-range potentials. We investigate the…
The motion of molecular motor is essential to the biophysical functioning of living cells. In principle, this motion can be regraded as a multiple chemical states process. In which, the molecular motor can jump between different chemical…
The bacterial flagellar motor (BFM) is responsible for driving bacterial locomotion and chemotaxis, fundamental processes in pathogenesis and biofilm formation. In the BFM, torque is generated at the interface between transmembrane proteins…
Biological functions in each animal cell depend on coordinated operations of a wide variety of molecular motors. Some of the these motors transport cargo to their respective destinations whereas some others are mobile workshops which…
Processive molecular motors which drive the traffic of organelles in cells move in a directed way along cytoskeletal filaments. On large time scales, they perform motor walks, i.e., peculiar random walks which arise from the repeated…
We analyze a simple stochastic model to describe motor molecules which cooperate in large groups and present a physical mechanism which can lead to oscillatory motion if the motors are elastically coupled to their environment. Beyond a…
Polar polymer activity is a fundamental mechanism behind a large number of cellular dynamical processes. The number and location of the active sites on the polymer backbone play a central role in their dynamics and conformational…
Molecular motors are single macromolecules that generate forces at the piconewton range and nanometer scale. They convert chemical energy into mechanical work by moving along filamentous structures. In this paper, we study the velocity of…
The dynamics of two groups of molecular motors pulling in opposite directions on a rigid filament is studied theoretically. To this end we first consider the behavior of one set of motors pulling in a single direction against an external…
We study the dynamics of an entangled, isotropic solution of polar filaments coupled by molecular motors which generate relative motion of the filaments in two and three dimensions. We investigate the stability of the homogeneous state for…
We propose a two-dimensional model for a complete description of the dynamics of molecular motors, including both the processive movement along track filaments and the dissociation from the filaments. The theoretical results on the…
In cells and in vitro assays the number of motor proteins involved in biological transport processes is far from being unlimited. The cytoskeletal binding sites are in contact with the same finite reservoir of motors (either the cytosol or…
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…
Reconstituted filamentous actin networks with myosin motor proteins form active gels, in which motor proteins generate forces that drive the network far from equilibrium. This motor activity can also strongly affect the network elasticity;…