Quantifying intermittent transport in cell cytoplasm

Active cellular transport is a fundamental mechanism for protein and vesicle delivery, cell cycle and molecular degradation. Viruses can hijack the transport system and use it to reach the nucleus. Most transport processes consist of intermittent dynamics, where the motion of a particle, such as a virus, alternates between pure Brownian and directed movement along microtubules. In this communication, we estimate the mean time for particle to attach to a microtubule network. This computation leads to a coarse grained equation of the intermittent motion in radial and cylindrical geometries. Finally, by using the degradation activity inside the cytoplasm, we obtain refined asymptotic estimations for the probability and the mean time a virus reaches a small nuclear pore.
Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures accepted as rapid communication in Phys. Rev. E