Environmental control of microtubule-based bidirectional cargo transport

¹ Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, CNRS (UMR 8627), University Paris-Sud - Bâtiment 210, F-91405 Orsay Cedex, France
² Fachrichtung Theoretische Physik, Universität des Saarlandes - D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

Received: 15 May 2014
Accepted: 19 June 2014

Abstract

Inside cells, various cargos are transported by teams of molecular motors. Intriguingly, the motors involved generally have opposite pulling directions, and the resulting cargo dynamics is a biased stochastic motion. It is an open question how the cell can control this bias. Here we develop a model which takes explicitly into account the elastic coupling of the cargo with each motor. We show that bias can be simply controlled or even reversed in a counterintuitive manner via a change in the external force exerted on the cargo or a variation of the environmental properties. Furthermore, the superdiffusive behavior found at short time scales indicates the emergence of motor cooperation induced by cargo-mediated coupling.