Movements of molecular motors: Ratchets, random walks and traffic phenomena

Klumpp, Stefan; Nieuwenhuizen, Theo M.; Lipowsky, Reinhard

Movements of molecular motors: Ratchets, random walks and traffic phenomena

Authors

Klumpp, Stefan

Nieuwenhuizen, Theo M.

Lipowsky, Reinhard

Description

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 unbinding from and rebinding to filaments. Unbound motors perform Brownian motion in the surrounding fluid. In addition, the traffic of molecular motors exhibits many cooperative phenomena. In particular, it faces similar problems as the traffic on streets such as the occurrence of traffic jams and the coordination of (two-way) traffic. These issues are studied here theoretically using lattice models.
latex, uses elsart.cls and phyeauth.cls (included), 10 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the proceedings of FQMT'04, Prague