Chemophoresis Engine: Theory of ATPase-driven Cargo Transport

The formation of macromolecule patterns depending on chemical concentration under non-equilibrium conditions, first observed during morphogenesis, has recently been observed at the intracellular level, and its relevance as intracellular morphogen has been demonstrated in the case of bacterial cell division. These studies have discussed how cargos maintain positional information provided by chemical gradients. However, how cargo transports are directly mediated by chemical gradients remains unknown. Based on the previously proposed mechanism of chemotaxis-like behavior of cargos (referred to as chemophoresis), we introduce the chemophoresis engine as a physicochemical mechanism of cargo motion, which transforms chemical free energy to directed motion through the catalytic ATP hydrolysis [1]. We propose its possible role as a universal principle of hydrolysis-driven intracellular transport.