Modeling the dynamic growth and branching of actin filaments

As an essential component of the cytoskeleton, actin filaments play a key role in a variety of cellular physiological activities. To better understand the function of actin filaments, which are a special kind of polymer chain, researchers have started to focus on the Brownian dynamics of polymers. C...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Soft matter 2022-05, Vol.18 (19), p.3649-3659
Main Authors: Xu, Wu, Liu, Xuheng, Liu, Xiaohu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actin
Assembly
Brownian motion
Cytoskeleton
Filaments
Finite element method
Grid method
Mathematical models
Mechanical properties
Numerical models
Polymers
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:As an essential component of the cytoskeleton, actin filaments play a key role in a variety of cellular physiological activities. To better understand the function of actin filaments, which are a special kind of polymer chain, researchers have started to focus on the Brownian dynamics of polymers. Currently, to study the dynamics of polymers, classical explicit bead-spring models and finite-element methods (FEMs) have both been broadly used. However, compared to bead-spring models, FEMs can address the mechanical properties of actin filaments and actin networks with more detail and better accuracy. However, current FEMs do not consider the dynamic assembly of actin into an actin filament network. Here, we extend the traditional FEM and present a new framework of the FEM based on the co-rotational grid method, which allows us to simulate the dynamic growth and branching of actin filaments. Several examples are studied. The proposed numerical model is capable of capturing the dynamic assembly of actin filaments. As an essential component of the cytoskeleton, actin filaments play a key role in a variety of cellular physiological activities.
ISSN:1744-683X
1744-6848
DOI:10.1039/d2sm00283c