Intracellular transport on convergent microtubule morphologies in two dimensions – a numerical study.

In our recent work Biophysical Reports 4(3), 100171 (2024), we calculated statistical properties of intracellular cargo transport in the presence of convergent microtubule morphologies with absorbing boundary conditions at the cell membrane. We found that mean first passage time (MFPT) exhibits a transition from low to high values as a function of on and off rates. This transition takes place over a range of on and off rates that are found in vivo. These predictions were obtained in the context of a one-dimensional model. In this current talk I will present the extension of our findings to two-dimensional geometry. Remarkably, the transition from low to high MFPT that was found in one dimension is retained in 2D. Moreover, this low to high MFPT transition takes place over a similar range of on and off rates. However, the magnitude of the increase now depends on the number of MTs. We compare our numerical predictions with explicit simulations of cargo on radial microtubule filament geometries.