Intra-cellular traffic: bio-molecular motors on filamentary tracks

Chowdhury, Debashish, Basu, A., Garai, Ashok, Greulich, Philip, Nishinari, Katsuhiro, Schadschneider, Andreas and Tripathy, T. (2007) Intra-cellular traffic: bio-molecular motors on filamentary tracks. The European Physical Journal B, 64, 593-600. (doi:10.1140/epjb/e2008-00073-5).

Abstract

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 RNA). Often, many such motors move simultaneously on the same
track and their collective properties have superficial similarities with vehicular traffic on highways. The
models we have developed provide “unified” description: in the low-density limit, a model captures the
transport properties of a single motor while, at higher densities the same model accounts for the collective
spatio-temporal organization of interacting motors. By drawing analogy with vehicular traffic, we have
introduced novel quantities for characterizing the nature of the spatio-temporal organization of molecular
motors on their tracks. We show how the traffic-like intracellular collective phenomena depend on the
mechano-chemistry of the corresponding individual motors

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Contributors

Author: Philip Greulich

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