Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 51: Posters - Cytosceletal Filaments

BP 51.4: Poster

Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 17:00–19:00, Poster C

A diffusion and capture mechanism creates large-scale correlations in the enzyme distribution on biofilaments — •Emanuel Reithmann, Louis Reese, and Erwin Frey — Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics and Center for NanoScience, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany

Diffusive motion on filaments with eventual capture at a reaction site is a common feature of regulating proteins in cell biology. Using a lattice gas model we study the impact of diffusion and capture for two central microtubule regulating proteins, which promote microtubule growth and shrinkage, respectively. We show that the capture mechanism has highly significant implications: It localizes the proteins at the reaction site and creates large-scale spatial correlations in the protein distribution along the filament. The latter finding leads to the failure of standard analytic approximation methods such as mean-field theories. To overcome this limitation, we develop an analytic approximation that globally accounts for relevant correlations and yields results that are in excellent agreement with experimental data. Our results show that diffusion and capture operates most efficiently at cellular enzyme concentrations which points to in vivo relevance.