Protein motors induced enhanced diffusion in intracellular transport

TL;DR

This paper models how protein motors influence particle diffusion inside cells, showing that the nature of motor forces and medium properties affect the observed enhanced diffusion, using a generalized diffusion framework.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized diffusion equation incorporating forces from protein motors and cytoskeleton, providing a theoretical explanation for enhanced intracellular diffusion.

Findings

Enhanced diffusion depends on motor force characteristics

Medium properties influence diffusion behavior

The model aligns with experimental observations

Abstract

Diffusion of transported particles in the intracellular medium is described by means of a generalized diffusion equation containing forces due to the cytoskeleton network and to the protein motors. We find that the enhanced diffusion observed in experiments depends on the nature of the force exerted by the protein motors and on parameters characterizing the intracellular medium which is described in terms of a generalized Debye spectrum for the noise density of states.