Tug-of-war of molecular motors: the effects of uneven load sharing

TL;DR

This paper compares two models of molecular motor-driven cargo transport, revealing how load sharing assumptions influence predicted velocities, run times, and reversions, with implications for understanding motor coordination.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of mean field and stochastic models, highlighting the effects of load sharing assumptions on cargo transport predictions.

Findings

Mean field model predicts higher cargo velocity than stochastic model.

Cargo mean velocity is unaffected by motor-cargo link stiffness.

Mean run time decreases as motor-cargo link stiffness increases.

Abstract

We analyze theoretically the problem of cargo transport along microtubules by motors of two species with opposite polarities. We consider two different one-dimensional models previously developed in the literature. On the one hand, a quite widespread model which assumes equal force sharing, here referred to as mean field model (MFM). On the other hand, a stochastic model (SM) which considers individual motor-cargo links. We find that in generic situations the MFM predicts larger cargo mean velocity, smaller mean run time and less frequent reversions than the SM. These phenomena are found to be consequences of the load sharing assumptions and can be interpreted in terms the probabilities of the different motility states. We also explore the influence of the viscosity in both models and the role of the stiffness of the motor-cargo links within the SM. Our results show that the mean cargo velocity is independent of the stiffness while the mean run time decreases with such a parameter. We explore the case of symmetric forward and backward motors considering kinesin- 1 parameters, and the problem of transport by kinesin-1 and cytoplasmic dyneins considering two different sets of parameters previously proposed for dyneins.