2011/03/10 by Sthitadhi Roy, Roy, Sthitadhi
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Micro and Nano Robotics #Microtubule and mitosis dynamics #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Subcellular Processes (q-bio.SC) #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.SC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1103.1971
6 pages Revtex, 5 eps figures
arxiv created 2011/03/10 · openalex publication_date 2011/03/10 · arxiv updated 2011/03/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Kinesin-5, also known as Eg5 in vertebrates is a processive motor with 4 heads, which moves on filamentous tracks called microtubules. The basic function of Kinesin-5 is to slide apart two anti-parallel microtubules by simultaneously walking on both the microtubules. We develop an analytical expression for the steady-state relative velocity of this sliding in terms of the rates of attachments and detachments of motor heads with the ATPase sites on the microtubules. We first analyse the motion of one pair of motor heads on one microtubule and then couple it to the motion of the other pair of motor heads of the same motor on the second microtubule to get the relative velocity of sliding.