A nonequilibrium diffusion and capture mechanism ensures tip-localization of regulating proteins on dynamic filaments

Abstract

Diffusive motion of regulatory enzymes on biopolymers with eventual capture at a reaction site is a common feature in cell biology. Using a lattice gas model we study the impact of diffusion and capture for a microtubule polymerase and a depolymerase. Our results show that the capture mechanism localizes the proteins and creates large-scale spatial correlations. We develop an analytic approximation that globally accounts for relevant correlations and yields results that are in excellent agreement with experimental data. Our results show that diffusion and capture operates most efficiently at cellular enzyme concentrations which points to in vivo relevance.

6 pages, 4 figures, and 9 pages supplemental material (including 8 figures and 1 table)

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Generic transport mechanisms for molecular traffic in cellular protrusions
• Two-species active transport along cylindrical biofilaments is limited by emergent topological hindrance
• Self-organized system-size oscillation of a stochastic lattice-gas model
• Herding of proteins by the ends of shrinking polymers