Kavli Affiliate: Ariel Amir
| First 5 Authors: Paul B. Dieterle, Jenny Zheng, Ethan Garner, Ariel Amir,
| Summary:
Dynamic instability — the growth, catastrophe, and shrinkage of
quasi-one-dimensional filaments — has been observed in multiple biopolymers.
Scientists have long understood the catastrophic cessation of growth and
subsequent depolymerization as arising from the interplay of hydrolysis and
polymerization at the tip of the polymer. Here, we show that for a broad class
of catastrophe models, the expected catastrophe time distribution is
exponential. We show that the distribution shape is insensitive to noise, but
that depletion of monomers from a finite pool can dramatically change the
distribution shape by reducing the polymerization rate. We derive a form for
this finite-pool catastrophe time distribution and show that finite-pool
effects can be important even when the depletion of monomers does not greatly
alter the polymerization rate.
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