Transport of molecules via polymerization in chemical gradients
arXiv:2411.12325 · doi:10.1039/D4SM01357C
Abstract
The transport of molecules for chemical reactions is critically important in various cellular biological processes. Despite thermal diffusion being prevalent in many biochemical processes, it is unreliable for any sort of directed transport or preferential accumulation of molecules. In this paper we propose a strategy for directed motion in which the molecules are transported by active carriers via polymerization. This transport is facilitated by chemical/activity gradients which generate an effective drift of the polymers. By marginalizing out the active degrees of freedom of the system, we obtain an effective Fokker-Planck equation for the Rouse modes of such active-passive hybrid polymers. In particular, we solve for the steady state distribution of the center of mass and its mean first passage time to reach an intended destination. We focus on how the arrangement of active units within the polymer affect its steady-state and dynamic behaviour and how they can be optimized to achieve high accumulation or rapid motility.
References in corpus (13)
- Self-motile colloidal particles: from directed propulsion to random walk
- Physics of Microswimmers - Single Particle Motion and Collective Behavior
- Active matter
- The physics of active polymers and filaments
- Unusual swelling of a polymer in a bacterial bath
- Activity induced collapse and re-expansion of rigid polymers
- Structure and dynamics of a self-propelled semiflexible filament
- Active polymer rings: activity-induced collapse and dynamical arrest
- Dynamics of active particles with space-dependent swim velocity
- Tangentially Driven Active Polar Linear Polymers -- An Analytical Study
- Polymer-Chain Configurations in Active and Passive Baths
- Interacting particles in an activity landscape
- Taxis of cargo-carrying microswimmers in traveling activity waves