Related papers: Length-dependent dynamics of microtubules
Microtubules (MTs) are cytoplasmic protein polymers that are essential for fundamental cellular processes including the maintenance of cell shape, organelle transport and formation of the mitotic spindle. Microtubule dynamic instability is…
We investigate the cooperative dynamics of an ensemble of N microtubules growing against an elastic barrier. Microtubules undergo so-called catastrophes, which are abrupt stochastic transitions from a growing to a shrinking state, and…
We propose a stochastic model that accounts for the growth, catastrophe and rescue processes of steady state microtubules assembled from MAP-free tubulin. Both experimentally and theoretically we study the perturbation of microtubule…
In this work we study a microtubule (MT) model, whose length is regulated by the action of processive kinesin motors. We treat the case of infinite processivity, i.e. particle exchange in the bulk is neglected. The exact results can be…
The cytoskeleton is regulated by a plethora of enzymes that influence the stability and dynamics of cytoskeletal filaments. Molecular motors of the kinesin-8 protein family depolymerise microtubules in a length-dependent manner, and…
The control of biopolymer length is mediated by proteins that localize to polymer ends and regulate polymerization dynamics. Several mechanisms have been proposed to achieve end localization. Here, we propose a novel mechanism by which a…
Here we study a driven lattice gas model for microtubule depolymerizing molecular motors, where traffic jams of motors induce stochastic switching between microtubule growth and shrinkage. We term this phenomenon \enquote{traffic dynamic…
We investigate the dynamics of an idealized model of microtubule growth that evolves by: (i) attachment of guanosine triphosphate (GTP) at rate lambda, (ii) conversion of GTP to guanosine diphosphate (GDP) at rate 1, and (iii) detachment of…
A novel theoretical model of dynamic instability of a system of linear (1D) microtubules (MTs) in a bounded domain is introduced for studying the role of a cell edge in vivo and analyzing the effect of competition for a limited amount of…
Assembly and disassembly dynamics of microtubules (MTs) is tightly controlled by MT associated proteins. Here, we investigate how plus-end-directed depolymerases of the kinesin-8 family regulate MT depolymerization dynamics. Employing an…
The intermittent transition between slow growth and rapid shrinkage in polymeric assemblies is termed dynamic instability, a feature observed in a variety of biochemically distinct assemblies including microtubules, actin and their…
In living cells, motor proteins, such as kinesin and dynein can move processively along microtubule (MT), and also detach from or attach to MT stochastically. Experiments have found that, the traffic of motor might be jammed, and various…
Single molecule manipulation techniques reveal that the mechanical resistance of a protein depends on the direction of the applied force. Using a lattice model of polymers, we show that changing the pulling direction leads to different…
Microtubules (MTs) are dynamic protein filaments essential for intracellular organization and transport, particularly in long-lived cells such as neurons. The plus and minus ends of neuronal MTs switch between growth and shrinking phases,…
Density dependence is important in the ecology and evolution of microbial and cancer cells. Typically, we can only measure net growth rates, but the underlying density-dependent mechanisms that give rise to the observed dynamics can…
The statistics of polymers advected by a turbulent flow are investigated. To limit the polymer lengths above to coil-stretch transition, a FENE-P type relaxation law is used. The turbulence is modeled by a random strain, delta-correlated in…
In biological materials, strong binding despite an applied load force is often based on clusters of dynamic bonds that share the load. Different macroscopic behaviors have been described depending on whether the load is shared locally or…
An important issue for the origins of life is ensuring the accurate maintenance of information in replicating polymers in the face of inevitable errors. Here, we investigated how this maintenance depends on reaction kinetics by…
Living cells are characterized by the micrometric confinement of various macromolecules at high concentrations. Using droplets containing binary polymer blends as artificial cells, we previously showed that cell-sized confinement causes…
Brownian diffusion of rod-like polymers in the presence of randomly distributed spherical obstacles is studied using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. It is observed that dependence of the reduced diffusion coefficient of these…