How Molecular Motors' Interaction Shapes Flagellar Beat and Its Fluctuations

Abstract

The stochastic dynamics of flagellar beating for micro-swimmers, such as flagellated cells, sperms and microalgae, is widely thought to include a feedback mechanism between flagellar shape and the rate of activation/de-activation of the $N \gg 1$ driving molecular motors. In the context of the so-called rigid filament models, where the axoneme is described by a single degree of freedom $X(t)$, we investigate the effect of direct coupling between the activity dynamics of adjacent motors, parametrized by $K \ge 0$. A functional Fokker-Planck equation for $X$ and the state of the $N$ motors is obtained. In the limit of small coupling $K \ll 1$, we derive a system of equations governing the dynamics of the Fourier modes of the active motor density, obtaining estimates for several observables and the fluctuations' quality factor $Q$. For larger $K$ we resort to numerical simulations. The effect of introducing the coupling $K>0$ is to increase characteristic times and the beating period. Moreover for large $K$s the limit cycle becomes bi-stable, with abrupt avalanches of the motor dynamics. Increasing $K$ is similar to what observed in the case $K=0$ when the confining elastic force is strongly reduced. The quality factor of fluctuations has a non-monotonic behavior: it first increases with $K$, then decreases. This is accompanied by the reduction and eventual disappearance of regions where the fraction of activated motor is nor $0$ neither $1$.