English

Branching, Capping, and Severing in Dynamic Actin Structures

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-13 v1 Cell Behavior

Abstract

Branched actin networks at the leading edge of a crawling cell evolve via protein-regulated processes such as polymerization, depolymerization, capping, branching, and severing. A formulation of these processes is presented and analyzed to study steady-state network morphology. In bulk, we identify several scaling regimes in severing and branching protein concentrations and find that the coupling between severing and branching is optimally exploited for conditions {\it in vivo}. Near the leading edge, we find qualitative agreement with the {\it in vivo} morphology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0703409,
  title  = {Branching, Capping, and Severing in Dynamic Actin Structures},
  author = {Ajay Gopinathan and Kun-Chun Lee and J. M. Schwarz and Andrea J. Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0703409},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 2 figures