Fig. 1

Physical modeling of mitochondria motion.(a) Representative scheme of a filamentous mitochondria characterized by its curvilinear shape. The organelle profile is described by the position (\(\vec {\textbf{r}}\)) of a material point (s) registered at a certain time (t) at a distance s from its edge. Each discrete point or bead constituting the filament (\(s_i\), green) was tracked to determine the trajectory of the center of mass (CM) and the displacement after a time lag \(\Delta \, t\). (b) Temporal evolution of simulated semiflexible filaments in the absence (F=0, blue; top panel) or presence (F\(\ne\)0, green; bottom panel) of active forces. The arrows indicate the points of force application at different times. (c) Trajectories of the CM corresponding to the filaments shown in (b) and dependence of the MSD with \(\tau\) for each of them (top and bottom panel, respectively). (d) Temporal evolution of K values and the CSD obtained for the filaments indicated in (b). In the presence of active forces (green data set), K fluctuations over time exhibit outliers that correspond to the jumps (arrows) shown in the CSD graph coinciding with the time of force application.