Spontaneous Oscillations of Collective Molecular Motors

Frank Julicher; Jacques Prost

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.78.4510

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arXiv · cond-mat/9611204

Spontaneous Oscillations of Collective Molecular Motors

Frank Julicher·Jacques Prost

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Abstract

We analyze a simple stochastic model to describe motor molecules which cooperate in large groups and present a physical mechanism which can lead to oscillatory motion if the motors are elastically coupled to their environment. Beyond a critical fuel concentration, the non-moving state of the system becomes unstable with respect to a mode with angular frequency omega. We present a perturbative description of the system near the instability and demonstrate that oscillation frequencies are determined by the typical timescales of the motors.

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Frank Julicher, Jacques Prost. 1996-11-26. Spontaneous Oscillations of Collective Molecular Motors. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.78.4510

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