Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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AKB: Biologische Physik

AKB 55: Molecular Motors

AKB 55.4: Talk

Tuesday, March 8, 2005, 15:15–15:30, TU H2013

Random walks and traffic of molecular motors — •Stefan Klumpp and Reinhard Lipowsky — Max-Planck-Institut für Kolloid- und Grenzflächenforschung, 14424 Potsdam-Golm

Molecular motors exhibit movements on various length scales. Movements on large scales are characterized by the binding to and unbinding from the filaments along which the motors move, and can be described by a class of lattice models [1]. In addition to providing a description of the random walks which arise from many diffusive encounters of motors with filaments, these models allow us to study motor-motor interactions.

The simplest and most obvious such interaction is the hard core repulsion or mutual exclusion of motors, in particular the mutual exclusion from the filament sites, which leads to a variety of cooperative phenomena such as traffic jams, the formation of density patterns and boundary-induced phase transitions [1,2].

In addition, we studied the case where two species of motors moving into opposite directions compete for the filament sites. For sufficiently strong motor–motor interactions, spontaneous symmetry breaking is observed [3]: One motor species occupies the filament while the other one is largely excluded from it. This symmetry breaking provides a mechanism for the formation of traffic lanes.
R. Lipowsky, S. Klumpp, and Th. M. Nieuwenhuizen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 108101 (2001).
S. Klumpp and R. Lipowsky, J. Stat. Phys. 133, 233 (2003).
S. Klumpp and R. Lipowsky, Europhys. Lett. 66, 90 (2004).