Limited Resources Induce Bistability in Microtubule Length Regulation

Autor:	Rank, Matthias, Mitra, Aniruddha, Reese, Louis, Diez, Stefan, Frey, Erwin
Rok vydání:	2018
Předmět:	Physics - Biological Physics Quantitative Biology - Subcellular Processes
Zdroj:	Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 148101 (2018)
Druh dokumentu:	Working Paper
DOI:	10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.148101
Popis:	The availability of protein is an important factor for the determination of the size of the mitotic spindle. Involved in spindle-size regulation is kinesin-8, a molecular motor and microtubule (MT) depolymerase, which is known to tightly control MT length. Here, we propose and analyze a theoretical model in which kinesin-induced MT depolymerization competes with spontaneous polymerization while supplies of both tubulin and kinesin are limited. In contrast to previous studies where resources were unconstrained, we find that, for a wide range of concentrations, MT length regulation is bistable. We test our predictions by conducting in vitro experiments, and find that the bistable behavior manifests in a bimodal MT length distribution. Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Supplementary Materials
Databáze:	arXiv
Externí odkaz:	http://arxiv.org/abs/1802.09265 Zobrazit plný text záznamu View this record from Arxiv