Molecular Communication: Simulation of Microtubule Topology

Molecular communication is one method for communication among biological nanomachines. Nanomachines are artificial or biological nano-scale devices that perform simple computation, sensing, or actuation. Future applications using nanomachines may require various communication mechanisms. For example, broadcast is one primitive communication for transmission from one sender to many receivers. In this paper, we discuss preliminary work on designing a molecular communication system that is adapted from the molecular motor transport mechanism existing in biological cells. In the proposed molecular motor mechanism, a sender releases information molecules, and molecular motors transport the information molecules along microtubule filaments to receiver nanomachines up to hundreds of micrometers away. This paper describes some possible arrangements for microtubule filaments and simulations to evaluate sending of one information molecule to many receivers. The simulation results indicate that the proposed molecular motor system transports simulated information molecules (100nm radius spheres) more quickly than a diffusion-only communication and that placement of receivers at the plus-end of microtubules results in lower propagation delay.

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