| Issue |
EPL
Volume 98, Number 6, June 2012
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 68005 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/98/68005 | |
| Published online | 10 July 2012 | |
Instrinsic oscillations of polymerizing antiparallel microtubules in a motor bath
1 Departament de Física Fonamental, Universitat de Barcelona - Carrer Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain, EU
2 Institute of Physics - Sachivalaya Marg, Bhubaneswar 751005, India
3 Departament d'Estructura i Constituents de la Matèria, Universitat de Barcelona - Carrer Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain, EU
Received: 23 March 2012
Accepted: 29 May 2012
We analyze the dynamics of overlapping antiparallel treadmilling microtubules in the presence of crosslinking processive motor proteins that counterbalance an external force. We show that coupling the force-dependent velocity of motors and the kinetics of motor exchange with a bath in the presence of treadmilling leads generically to oscillatory behavior. In addition, we show that coupling the polymerization kinetics to the external force through the kinetics of the crosslinking motors can stabilize the oscillatory instability into finite-amplitude nonlinear oscillations and may lead to other scenarios, including bistability.
PACS: 87.16.A- – Theory, modeling, and simulations / 87.16.dj – Dynamics and fluctuations / 87.16.Ka – Filaments, microtubules, their networks, and supramolecular assemblies
© EPLA, 2012
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