Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 9: Poster II

BP 9.7: Poster

Monday, March 16, 2020, 17:30–19:30, P2/2OG

Length distributions of microtubules with a multistep catastrophe mechanism — •Felix Schwietert, Lina Heydenreich, and Jan Kierfeld — TU Dortmund University, 44221 Dortmund, Germany

Regarding the experimental observation that microtubule catastrophe can be described as a multistep process, we extend the Dogterom-Leibler model for dynamic instability in order to discuss the effect that such a multistep catastrophe mechanism has on the distribution of microtubule lengths in the two regimes of bounded and unbounded growth. We show that in the former case the steady state length distribution is non-exponential and has a lighter tail if multiple steps are required to undergo a catastrophe. If rescue events are possible, we detect a maximum in the distribution, i.e., the microtubule has a most probable length greater than zero. In the regime of unbounded growth, the length distribution converges to a Gaussian distribution whose variance decreases with the number of catastrophe steps. All results are verified by stochastic simulations.