Cooperative behavior of molecular motors: Cargo transport and traffic phenomena

Abstract

All eukaryotic cells including those of our own body contain complex transport systems based on molecular motors which walk along cytoskeletal filaments. These motors are rather small and make discrete mechanical steps with a step size of the order of 10 nm but are able to pull cargo particles over much larger distances, from micrometers up to meters. In vivo, the intracellular cargos include large membrane-bounded organelles, smaller vesicles, a subset of mRNAs, cytoskeletal filaments, and various protein building blocks, which are transported between different cell compartments. This cargo transport is usually performed by teams of motors. If all motors belong to the same molecular species, the cooperative action of the motors leads to uni-directional transport with a strongly increased run length and with a characteristic force dependence of the velocity distributions. If two antagonistic teams of motors pull on the same cargo particle, they perform a stochastic tug-of-war, which is characterized by a subtle force balance between the two motor teams and leads to several distinct patterns of bi-directional transport. So far, all experimental observations on bi-directional transport are consistent with such a tug-of-war. If many motors and/or cargo particles are transported along the filaments, one encounters various traffic phenomena. Depending on their mutual interactions and the compartment geometry, the motors form various spatio-temporal patterns such as traffic jams, and undergo nonequilibrium phase transitions between different patterns of transport.