Correlations and Symmetry of Interactions Influence Collective Dynamics of Molecular Motors

TL;DR

This paper investigates how correlations and symmetry in interactions influence the collective dynamics of molecular motors, revealing that interaction type and symmetry significantly affect transport properties through a new analytical approach.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical method to analytically compute the dynamic properties of interacting molecular motors considering correlations and symmetry effects.

Findings

Correlations are weaker and more short-range for repulsive interactions.

Symmetry of interactions impacts the dynamic behavior of molecular motors.

Theoretical predictions are validated by extensive Monte Carlo simulations.

Abstract

Enzymatic molecules that actively support many cellular processes, including transport, cell division and cell motility, are known as motor proteins or molecular motors. Experimental studies indicate that they interact with each other and they frequently work together in large groups. To understand the mechanisms of collective behavior of motor proteins we study the effect of interactions in the transport of molecular motors along linear filaments. It is done by analyzing a recently introduced class of totally asymmetric exclusion processes that takes into account the intermolecular interactions via thermodynamically consistent approach. We develop a new theoretical method that allows us to compute analytically all dynamic properties of the system. Our analysis shows that correlations play important role in dynamics of interacting molecular motors. Surprisingly, we find that the correlations for repulsive interactions are weaker and more short-range than the correlations for the attractive interactions. In addition, it is shown that symmetry of interactions affect dynamic properties of molecular motors. The implications of these findings for motor proteins transport are discussed. Our theoretical predictions are tested by extensive Monte Carlo computer simulations.