Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 20: Statistical Physics in Biological Systems II (joint with DY)

BP 20.9: Talk

Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 17:15–17:30, H43

Teams of molecular spiders: Cooperative effects enhance the transport properties — •Matthias Rank, Louis Reese, and Erwin Frey — Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics (ASC) and Center for NanoScience (CeNS), Department of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Molecular spiders are synthetic molecular motors based on DNA nanotechnology. While natural molecular motors have evolved towards very high efficiency, it remains a major challenge to develop efficient designs for man-made molecular motors. Inspired by biological motor proteins like kinesin and myosin, molecular spiders comprise a body and several legs. The legs walk on a lattice that is coated with substrate which can be cleaved catalytically. We propose a novel molecular spider design in which n spiders form a team. Our theoretical considerations show that coupling several spiders together alters the dynamics of the resulting team significantly. Although spiders operate at a scale where diffusion is dominant, spider teams can be tuned to behave nearly ballistic, which results in fast and predictable motion. Based on the separation of time scales of substrate and product dwell times, we develop a theory which utilises equivalence classes to coarse-grain the micro-state space. In addition, we calculate diffusion coefficients of the spider teams, employing a mapping of an n-spider team on an n-dimensional random walker on a confined lattice. We validate these results with Monte Carlo simulations and predict optimal parameters of the molecular spider team architecture which makes their motion most directed and maximally predictable.