Dynamic model for kinesin-mediated long-range transport and its local traffic jam caused by tau proteins

In neurons, several intracellular cargoes are transported by motor proteins (kinesins) which walk on microtubules (MTs). However, kinesins can possibly unbind from the MTs before they reach their destinations. The unbound kinesins randomly diffuse in neurons until they bind to MTs. Then, they walk again along the MTs to continue their tasks. Kinesins repeat this cycle of motion until they transport their cargoes to the destinations. However, most previous models mainly focused on the motion of kinesins when they walk on MTs. Thus, a new model is required to encompass the various types of kinesin motion. We developed a comprehensive model and studied the long-range axonal transport of neurons using the model. To enhance reliability of the model, it was constructed based on multiphysics on kinesin motion (i.e., chemical kinetics, diffusion, fluid dynamics, nonlinear dynamics, and stochastic characteristics). Also, parameter values for kinesin motions are carefully obtained by comparing the model predictions and several experimental observations. The axonal transport can be degraded when a large number of binding sites on MTs are blocked by excessive tau proteins. By considering the interference between walking kinesins and tau molecules on MTs, effects of tau proteins on the axonal transport are studied. One of the meaningful predictions obtained from the model is that the velocity is not an effective metric to estimate the degradation of the transport because the decrease in velocity is not noticeable when the concentration of tau protein is not high. However, our model shows that the transport locally changes near tau molecules on MTs even when the change in the velocity is not significant. Thus, a statistical method is proposed to detect this local change effectively. The advantage of this method is that a value obtained from this method is highly sensitive to the concentration of tau protein. Another benefit of this method is that this highly sensitive value can be acquired with relatively low precision and low temporal resolution considering the time scale and length scale of the kinesin motion. This method can be used to estimate the condition of the axonal transport system.