Frictional drag produced by motor proteins during cargo transport

When transporting cellular cargoes along the cytoskeletal filament track, motor proteins produce additional frictional drag. This protein friction determines the mean speed of a cargo for a given force and the energy dissipated per chemical cycle. Motor protein friction has been measured directly in an optical tweezer experiment, and can also be estimated from the force-velocity curve, close to stall. We present a mathematical and computational study of this phenomenon. In our model, a motor protein is elastically linked to a mu m-sized cargo particle, and undergoes tightly coupled, biased random walk-like motion on the microtubule filament, the bias being contributed by nucleotide hydrolysis as well as stretching of the linker spring, with spring constant kappa. The cytoplasm is assumed to be a Newtonian fluid, which exerts a damping force gamma V on the cargo moving with velocity V. The effective drag coefficient gamma(eff) = F/V is measured in our numerical simulations, where F is the net external force on the cargo, including motor-induced force, near F = 0. The motor friction gamma(m) = gamma(eff) - gamma is predicted theoretically and compared with simulation data for a range of values of kappa and gamma. The predicted values for small gamma are found to be similar to experimental results, though smaller in magnitude. Numerical simulations also show that gamma(m) is a weakly increasing function of gamma, and is additive when multiple motors are involved in transportation. Copyright (C) 2021 EPLA

Automated summary

This study investigates the phenomenon of protein friction in transporting cellular cargoes along the cytoskeletal filament track. Through mathematical modeling and computational simulations, the motion of motor proteins and the related drag coefficient are analyzed. Results show the relationship between motor protein friction and background damping force, as well as the behavior when multiple motors are involved in transportation.