Movements of molecular motors: Ratchets, random walks and traffic phenomena

TL;DR

This paper models the movement and traffic phenomena of molecular motors in cells, focusing on their directed walks, unbinding and rebinding behavior, and cooperative traffic effects like jams, using lattice models.

Contribution

It introduces lattice models to analyze the complex traffic and movement behaviors of molecular motors, highlighting cooperative phenomena and traffic jams.

Findings

Molecular motors perform directed walks with unbinding and rebinding dynamics.

Traffic phenomena of motors resemble street traffic, including jams and coordination issues.

Lattice models effectively simulate motor traffic and cooperative effects.

Abstract

Processive molecular motors which drive the traffic of organelles in cells move in a directed way along cytoskeletal filaments. On large time scales, they perform motor walks, i.e., peculiar random walks which arise from the repeated unbinding from and rebinding to filaments. Unbound motors perform Brownian motion in the surrounding fluid. In addition, the traffic of molecular motors exhibits many cooperative phenomena. In particular, it faces similar problems as the traffic on streets such as the occurrence of traffic jams and the coordination of (two-way) traffic. These issues are studied here theoretically using lattice models.