2018/09/21 by Igor Goychuk, Goychuk, Igor · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Protein Structure and Dynamics #stochastic dynamics and bifurcation
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1809.08032
openalex publication_date 2018/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Multiple experiments show that various submicron particles such as\nmagnetosomes, RNA messengers, viruses, and even much smaller nanoparticles such\nas globular proteins diffuse anomalously slow in viscoelastic cytosol of living\ncells. Hence, their sufficiently fast directional transport by molecular motors\nsuch as kinesins is crucial for the cell operation. It has been shown recently\nthat the traditional flashing Brownian ratchet models of molecular motors are\ncapable to describe both normal and anomalous transport of such subdiffusing\ncargos by molecular motors with a very high efficiency. This work elucidates\nfurther an important role of mechanochemical coupling in such an anomalous\ntransport. It shows a natural emergence of a perfect subdiffusive ratchet\nregime due to allosteric effects, where the random rotations of a "catalytic\nwheel" at the heart of the motor operation become perfectly synchronized with\nthe random stepping of a heavily loaded motor, so that only one ATP molecule is\nconsumed at each motor step along microtubule on average. However, the number\nof rotations made by the catalytic engine and the traveling distance both scale\nsublinearly in time. Nevertheless, this anomalous transport can be very fast in\nabsolute terms.\n