Dynamic and thermodynamic bounds for collective motor-driven transport

TL;DR

This paper derives new thermodynamic bounds for collective motor-driven transport, providing tighter limits on efficiency, velocity, and precision, with analytic Pareto frontiers and conditions for their saturation.

Contribution

It introduces a new lower bound for entropy production in collective transport systems, improving upon the second law, and analyzes conditions for optimal performance saturation.

Findings

Derived a tighter entropy production bound for collective motors.

Established analytic Pareto frontiers for efficiency, velocity, and precision.

Identified conditions under which Pareto frontiers are saturated.

Abstract

Molecular motors work collectively to transport cargo within cells, with anywhere from one to several hundred motors towing a single cargo. For a broad class of collective-transport systems, we use tools from stochastic thermodynamics to derive a new lower bound for the entropy production rate which is tighter than the second law. This implies new bounds on the velocity, efficiency, and precision of general transport systems and a set of analytic Pareto frontiers for identical motors. In a specific model, we identify conditions for saturation of these Pareto frontiers.