English

Transverse fluctuations control the assembly of semiflexible filaments

Soft Condensed Matter 2023-12-18 v2 Materials Science Statistical Mechanics Biological Physics

Abstract

The kinetics of the assembly of semiflexible filaments through end-to-end annealing is key to the structure of the cytoskeleton, but is not understood. We analyze this problem through scaling theory and simulations, and uncover a regime where filaments ends find each other through bending fluctuations without the need for the whole filament to diffuse. This results in a very substantial speed-up of assembly in physiological regimes, and could help understand the dynamics of actin and intermediate filaments in biological processes such as wound healing and cell division.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.03088,
  title  = {Transverse fluctuations control the assembly of semiflexible filaments},
  author = {Valerio Sorichetti and Martin Lenz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.03088},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Main: 5 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary: 10 pages, 9 figures. To be published in Physical Review Letters