Effects of the chemomechanical stepping cycle on the traffic of molecular motors

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the stepping kinetics of molecular motors influence their traffic behavior on crowded filaments, revealing that certain parameters like unbinding rate and run length are highly sensitive to these kinetics.

Contribution

It introduces a simple two-state chemomechanical cycle model to analyze the impact of stepping kinetics on molecular motor traffic, highlighting the dependence of key parameters on these kinetics.

Findings

Unbinding rate can increase or decrease with traffic density depending on motor step details.

Run length may significantly decrease or remain unaffected by traffic density.

Theoretical results align with recent experimental observations.

Abstract

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 kinetics of the step, a few observable parameters exhibit a strong dependence on these parameters. Most strikingly, the effective unbinding rate of the motors may both increase and decrease with increasing traffic density, depending on the details of the motor step. Likewise the run length either exhibits a strong decrease or almost no dependence on the traffic density. We compare our theoretical results with recent experimental observations on motor traffic.