Dynamic instability of microtubules: effect of catastrophe-suppressing drugs

Abstract

Microtubules are stiff filamentary proteins that constitute an important component of the cytoskeleton of cells. These are known to exhibit a dynamic instability. A steadily growing microtubule can suddenly start depolymerizing very rapidly; this phenomenon is known as ``catastrophe''. However, often a shrinking microtubule is ``rescued'' and starts polymerizing again. Here we develope a model for the polymerization-depolymerization dynamics of microtubules in the presence of {\it catastrophe-suppressing drugs}. Solving the dynamical equations in the steady-state, we derive exact analytical expressions for the length distributions of the microtubules tipped with drug-bound tubulin subunits as well as those of the microtubules, in the growing and shrinking phases, tipped with drug-free pure tubulin subunits. We also examine the stability of the steady-state solutions.

arXiv commentMinor corrections; final published version

References in corpus (2)

• Novel steady state of a microtubule assembly in a confined geometry
• Modeling oscillatory Microtubule--Polymerization

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Stochastic mechano-chemical kinetics of molecular motors: a multidisciplinary enterprise from a physicist's perspective
• Dynamics of Microtubule Growth and Catastrophe
• Dynamics of Microtubule Instabilities
• Modeling the Effects of Drug Binding on the Dynamic Instability of Microtubules
• Stochastic model of elongation-shortening-switching kinetics of a polymeric filament: Critical slowing down of first-passage and finite-size regularization