Hitchhiking Through the Cytoplasm

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel 'hitchhiking' mechanism for intracellular cargo transport driven by microtubule fluctuations, explaining bidirectional movement without molecular motors and allowing regulation via binding kinetics.

Contribution

It proposes a new transport mechanism based on microtubule fluctuations and transient cargo binding, expanding understanding of intracellular transport processes.

Findings

Hitchhiking explains bidirectional transport without motors.

Cells can regulate vesicle transport by tuning binding kinetics.

Microtubule fluctuations facilitate long-range cargo movement.

Abstract

We propose an alternative mechanism for intracellular cargo transport which results from motor induced longitudinal fluctuations of cytoskeletal microtubules (MT). The longitudinal fluctuations combined with transient cargo binding to the MTs lead to long range transport even for cargos and vesicles having no molecular motors on them. The proposed transport mechanism, which we call ``hitchhiking'', provides a consistent explanation for the broadly observed yet still mysterious phenomenon of bidirectional transport along MTs. We show that cells exploiting the hitchhiking mechanism can effectively up- and down-regulate the transport of different vesicles by tuning their binding kinetics to characteristic MT oscillation frequencies.