The effects of extreme fluctuations in a many-body Brownian ratchet
Evan Hohlfeld (UMass Amherst), Phillip Geissler (UC Berkeley)
Mechanics and Physics of Biological Cells
Tue 4:20 - 5:40
Barus-Holley 141
Cells frequently deploy Brownian ratchets to transform chemical energy into mechanical work. These machines work by inducing a non-equilibrium bias in an otherwise symmetric stochastic process. While much work has focused on single-molecule ratchets, cells also have many-body ratchets, e.g. polymerization ratchet that drive the lamellipodium. I will explain how the statistical properties of the extreme members of a ratchet team shape the collective behavior of the team. In the context of a biochemically realistic model of the lamellipodium, I will show how straight-forward extrapolation from a single molecule ratchet to its many-body analog can be both quantitatively and qualitatively misleading.