ABSTRACT
As we already discussed in Chapter 3, motor proteins have been intensively investigated by a variety of different methods and techniques (Howard 2001, Greenleaf et al. 2007, Veigel and Schmidt 2011, Kolomeisky and Fisher 2007, Kolomeisky 2013, Chowdhury 2013) [68, 63, 175, 84, 82, 30]. The quantity of collected experimental information on biological molecular motors is quite large, but it is not well rationalized. These observations stimulated multiple attempts to develop microscopic understanding of processes that govern the functioning of motor proteins. Several theoretical ideas have been proposed and analyzed (Howard 2001, Kolomeisky and Fisher 2007, Kolomeisky 2013, Chowdhury 2013, Julicher et al. 1997) [68, 84, 82, 30, 76]. It is important to note that many aspects of motor proteins’ activities are known with quite a high degree of precision. So it should definitely help us in testing various theoretical proposals. In addition, the fundamental concepts from physics and chemistry discussed in previous chapters should assist us in evaluation of the feasibility of different theoretical ideas concerning motor proteins. In this chapter, as well as in the next, we critically discuss major theoretical approaches that have been employed for describing dynamics and properties of biological molecular motors.
