Novel steady state of a microtubule assembly in a confined geometry

Abstract

We study the steady state of an assembly of microtubules in a confined volume, analogous to the situation inside a cell where the cell boundary forms a natural barrier to growth. We show that the dynamical equations for growing and shrinking microtubules predict the existence of two steady states, with either exponentially decaying or exponentially increasing distribution of microtubule lengths. We identify the regimes in parameter space corresponding to these steady states. In the latter case, the apparent catastrophe frequency near the boundary was found to be significantly larger than that in the interior. Both the exponential distribution of lengths and the increase in the catastrophe frequency near the cell margin is in excellent agreement with recent experimental observations.

8 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev. E

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Stochastic mechano-chemical kinetics of molecular motors: a multidisciplinary enterprise from a physicist's perspective
• Intracellular transport driven by cytoskeletal motors: General mechanisms and defects
• Analysis of a microscopic stochastic model of microtubule dynamic instability
• Microtubules Interacting with a Boundary: Mean Length and Mean First-Passage Times
• Dynamics and length distribution of microtubules under force and confinement
• Dynamic instability of microtubules: effect of catastrophe-suppressing drugs
• Critical threshold for microtubule amplification through templated severing
• Tracking of plus-ends reveals microtubule functional diversity in different cell types
• Strength and stability of active ligand-receptor bonds: a microtubule attached to a wall by molecular motor tethers
• Microtubule polymerization generates microtentacles important in circulating tumor cell invasion
• A first-passage-time theory for search and capture of chromosomes by microtubules in mitosis