This paper investigates analytically the molecular-motor-assisted transport between the cell nucleus and cell membrane in an elongated cell, which allows the formulation of governing equations in a cylindrical coordinate system. This problem is relevant to biomimetic transport systems as well as to many biological processes occurring in living cells, such as the viral infection of a cell. The obtained analytical solution is shown to agree well with a high-accuracy numerical solution of the same problem. The developed analytical technique extends the applicability of the generalized Fourier series method to a new type of problems involving intracellular transport of organelles.
The aim of this paper is to investigate, by means of a numerical simulation, the effect of the half-life of cytoskeletal elements (CEs) on superposition of several waves representing concentrations of running, pausing, and off-track anterograde and retrograde CE populations. The waves can be induced by simultaneous microinjections of radiolabeled CEs in different locations in the vicinity of a neuron body; alternatively, the waves can be induced by microinjecting CEs at the same location several times, with a time interval between the injections. Since the waves spread out as they propagate downstream, unless their amplitude decreases too fast, they eventually superimpose. As a result of superposition and merging of several waves, for the case with a large half-life of CEs, a single wave is formed. For the case with a small half-life the waves vanish before they have enough time to merge.
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