Related papers: Filament depolymerization by motor molecules
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…
We present a generic coarse-grained model to describe molecular motors acting on polymer substrates, mimicking, for example, RNA polymerase on DNA or kinesin on microtubules. The polymer is modeled as a connected chain of beads; motors are…
Three problems in the statistical mechanics of models for an assembly of molecular motors interacting with cytoskeletal filaments are reviewed. First, a description of the hydrodynamical behaviour of density-density correlations in…
We consider the dynamics of a bio-filament under the collective drive of motor proteins. They are attached irreversibly to a substrate and undergo stochastic attachment-detachment with the filament to produce a directed force on it. We…
The transport by molecular motors along cytoskeletal filaments is studied theoretically in the presence of static defects. The movements of single motors are described as biased random walks along the filament as well as binding to and…
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…
Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…
We have studied the elastic response of actin networks with both compliant and rigid crosslinks by modeling molecular motors as force dipoles. Our finite element simulations show that for compliant crosslinkers such as filamin A, the…
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 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…
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…
We analyse the dynamics of overlapping antiparallel treadmilling microtubules in the presence of crosslinking processive motor proteins that counterbalance an external force. We show that coupling the force-dependent velocity of motors and…
It has been found in in vitro experiments that cytoskeletal filaments driven by molecular motors show finite diffusion in sliding motion even in the long filament limit [Y. Imafuku et al., Biophys. J. 70 (1996) 878-886; N. Noda et al.,…
While a significant body of investigations have been focused on the process of protein self-assembly, much less is understood about the reverse process of a filament breaking due to thermal motion into smaller fragments, or depolymerization…
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…
We study the influence of filament elasticity on the motion of collective molecular motors. It is found that for a backbone flexibility exceeding a characteristic value (motor stiffness divided through the mean displacement between attached…
Length-regulation of microtubules (MTs) is essential for many cellular processes. Molecular motors like kinesin 8, which move along MTs and also act as depolymerases, are known as key players in MT dynamics. However, the regulatory…
Motivated by experimental results on the interplay between molecular motors and tau proteins, we extend lattice-based models of intracellular transport to include a second species of particle which locally influences the motor-filament…
Molecular motors are macromolecular complexes which use some form of input energy to perform mechanical work. The filamentary tracks, on which these motors move, are made of either proteins (e.g., microtubules) or nucleic acids (DNA or…
Polymerization of dendritic actin networks underlies important mechanical processes in cell biology such as the protrusion of lamellipodia, propulsion of growth cones in dendrites of neurons, intracellular transport of organelles and…