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arXiv · 1206.2842

Coupling of Active Motion and Advection Shapes Intracellular Cargo Transport

P. Khuc Trong·J. Guck·R. E. Goldstein
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Abstract

Intracellular cargo transport can arise from passive diffusion, active motor-driven transport along cytoskeletal filament networks, and passive advection by fluid flows entrained by such motor/cargo motion. Active and advective transport are thus intrinsically coupled as related, yet different representations of the same underlying network structure. A reaction-advection-diffusion system is used here to show that this coupling affects the transport and localization of a passive tracer in a confined geometry. For sufficiently low diffusion, cargo localization to a target zone is optimized either by low reaction kinetics and decoupling of bound and unbound states, or by a mostly disordered cytoskeletal network with only weak directional bias. These generic results may help to rationalize subtle features of cytoskeletal networks, for example as observed for microtubules in fly oocytes.

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P. Khuc Trong, J. Guck, R. E. Goldstein. 2012-06-13. Coupling of Active Motion and Advection Shapes Intracellular Cargo Transport. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.109.028104

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