Enhanced Dynamics of Confined Cytoskeletal Filaments Driven by Asymmetric Motors.

ABSTRACT: Cytoskeletal filaments and molecular motors facilitate the micron-scale force generation necessary for the distribution of organelles and the restructuring of the cytoskeleton within eukaryotic cells. Although the mesoscopic structure and the dynamics of such filaments have been studied in vitro and in vivo, their connection with filament polarity-dependent motor-mediated force generation is not well understood. Using 2D Brownian dynamics simulations, we study a dense, confined mixture of rigid microtubules (MTs) and active springs that have arms that cross-link neighboring MT pairs and move unidirectionally on the attached MT. We simulate depletion interactions between MTs using an attractive potential. We show that dimeric motors, with a motile arm on only one of the two MTs, produce lar

SUBMITTER: Ravichandran A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5611680 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature