In the cellular phenomena of cytoplasmic streaming, molecular motors carrying cargo along a network of microtubules entrain the surrounding fluid. The piconewton forces produced by individual motors are sufficient to deform long microtubules, as are the collective fluid flows generated by many moving motors. Studies of streaming during oocyte development in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster have shown a transition from a spatially disordered cytoskeleton, supporting flows with only short-ranged correlations, to an ordered state with a cell-spanning vortical flow. To test the hypothesis that this transition is driven by fluid-structure interactions, we study a discrete-filament model and a coarse-grained continuum theory for motors moving on a deformable cytoskeleton, both of which are shown to exhibit a swirling instability to spontaneous large-scale rotational motion, as observed.

中文翻译：

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微管细胞骨架的旋流不稳定性

在细胞质流的细胞现象中，沿着微管网络运载货物的分子马达会带走周围的流体。单个电动机产生的皮微微力足以使长的微管变形，许多移动电动机产生的集体流体流也是如此。对果蝇果蝇卵母细胞发育过程中流态的研究表明，果蝇从空间无序的细胞骨架（仅支持短距离相关性支持流）过渡到有跨细胞涡流的有序状态。为了检验这种转变是由流体-结构相互作用驱动的假设，我们研究了在可变形细胞骨架上运动的电动机的离散细丝模型和粗粒度连续体理论，两者均显示出如所观察到的那样，旋涡不稳定导致自发的大范围旋转运动。