Emergent Spatiotemporal Organization in Stochastic Intracellular Transport Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper reviews how living cells maintain organized and precise intracellular transport despite the stochastic and noisy nature of molecular interactions, highlighting mechanisms of noise suppression and utilization.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms behind emergent order in stochastic intracellular transport and suggests directions for future research.

Findings

Cells achieve organized transport despite stochastic molecular behavior

Mechanisms of noise suppression and utilization are key to transport efficiency

Emergent spatiotemporal order is robust and precise

Abstract

The interior of a living cell is an active, fluctuating, and crowded environment. Yet, it maintains a high level of coherent organization, which is readily apparent in the intracellular transport network. Membrane-bound compartments called endosomes play a key role in carrying cargo, in conjunction with myriad components including cargo adaptor proteins, membrane sculptors, motor proteins, and the cytoskeleton. These components coordinate to effectively navigate the crowded cell interior and transport cargo to specific intracellular locations, even though the underlying protein interactions and enzymatic reactions exhibit stochastic behavior. A major challenge is to measure, analyze, and understand how, despite the inherent stochasticity of the constituent processes, the collective outcomes show an emergent spatiotemporal order that is precise and robust. This review focuses on this intriguing dichotomy, providing insights into the known mechanisms of noise suppression and noise utilization in intracellular transport processes, and also identifies opportunities for future inquiry.