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Motor-Driven Dynamics Of Cytoskeletal Filaments In Motility Assays, Shiladitya Banerjee, M. Cristina Marchetti, Kristian Muller-Nedebock

Physics - All Scholarship

We model analytically the dynamics of a cytoskeletal filament in a motility assay. The filament is described as rigid rod free to slide in two dimensions. The motor proteins consist of polymeric tails tethered to the plane and modeled as linear springs and motor heads that bind to the filament. As in related models of rigid and soft two-state motors, the binding/unbinding dynamics of the motor heads and the dependence of the transition rates on the load exerted by the motor tails play a crucial role in controlling the filament's dynamics. Our work shows that the filament effectively behaves as …