Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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AKB: Biologische Physik

AKB 21: Intracellular Transport

AKB 21.3: Talk

Thursday, March 30, 2006, 11:15–11:30, ZEU 260

Traffic of molecular motors in the presence of obstacles — •Yan Chai, Stefan Klumpp, and Reinhard Lipowsky — Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces, Golm, Germany

The traffic of molecular motors along cytoskeletal filaments is studied theoretically using lattice gas models. These models describe the movements of a molecular motor along a filament as a biased random walk which is defined by a set of stepping probabilities for forward steps along the filament, binding to the filament and unbinding from the filament. We consider the case where obstacles such as lattice defects or additional proteins are present on the filament. We distinguish three basic types of defects, which differ from non-defect filament sites in only one of the motors’ stepping parameters. We determine the motor current and density profiles using analytical calculations and Monte Carlo simulations.