Effect of membrane fluidity on the multi-motor transport of intracellular cargoes

In eukaryotic cells, membrane-bound cargoes are transported by teams of molecular motors that diffuse on the lipid membrane. The effect of the cargo fluidity on transport properties is unclear. In particular, it's unknown whether the motor diffusivity helps cargoes navigate the crowded cellular environment especially in the presence of heterogeneity in motor properties. We developed a stochastic dynamical simulation of kinesin-based cargo transport along microtubules that explicitly considers the Langevin dynamics of motors on the cargo surface to answer these questions. Our previous work showed that motor diffusivity reduces inter-motor interference and enhances cargo runlength even in the absence of crowding and heterogeneity. Here we study the effect of motor diffusivity on multi-motor transport when the motor population has a distribution of velocities and also explore how cargoes navigate roadblocks (like Microtubule Associated Proteins) that are typically present on microtubules in vivo.