2008/10/22 by Vahid Rezania, Jack Tuszynski, Jack A. Tuszyński
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Microtubule and mitosis dynamics #Photosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms #Physics #Slime Mold and Myxomycetes Research #cond-mat.stat-mech #q-bio.BM #q-bio.QM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physleta.2008.10.038
published as Physics Letters A 372 (2008) 7051--7056 · 12 pages, 2 figures. Accepted in Physics Letters A
arxiv created 2008/10/22 · openalex publication_date 2008/10/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In this paper we propose a microscopic model to study the polymerization of microtubules (MTs). Starting from fundamental reactions during MT's assembly and disassembly processes, we systematically derive a nonlinear system of equations that determines the dynamics of microtubules in 3D. %coexistence with tubulin dimers in a solution. We found that the dynamics of a MT is mathematically expressed via a cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS) equation. Interestingly, the generic 3D solution of the NLS equation exhibits linear growing and shortening in time as well as temporal fluctuations about a mean value which are qualitatively similar to the dynamic instability of MTs observed experimentally. By solving equations numerically, we have found spatio-temporal patterns consistent with experimental observations.