Several Issues in Modeling Molecular Motors

Several Issues in Modeling Molecular Motors

Protein motors play a central role in many cell functions. Understanding the operating principles of molecular motors is crucial to comprehending intracellular protein transport and cell motility. Due to the small size and the negligible inertia of molecular motors, the motor motion is damped by high viscous friction and is subject to large thermal excitations form the surrounding fluid environ...

Cooperative cargo transport by several molecular motors.

The transport of cargo particles that are pulled by several molecular motors in a cooperative manner is studied theoretically in this article. The transport properties depend primarily on the maximal number N of motor molecules that may pull simultaneously on the cargo particle. Because each motor must unbind from the filament after a finite number of steps but can also rebind to it again, the ...

Modeling Spatial Distribution of Intracellular Organelles by Molecular Motors

RMP Colloquia Modeling molecular motors

The authors present general considerations and simple models for the operation of isothermal motors at small scales, in asymmetric environments. Their work is inspired by recent observations on the behavior of molecular motors in the biological realm, where chemical energy is converted into mechanical energy. A generic Onsager-like description of the linear (close to equilibrium) regime is pres...

modeling spatial distribution of intracellular organelles by molecular motors