Abstract
The cortical array is a structure consisting of highly aligned microtubules which plays a crucial role in the characteristic uniaxial expansion of all growing plant cells. Recent experiments have shown polymerization-driven collisions between the membrane-bound cortical microtubules, suggesting a possible mechanism for their alignment. We present both a coarse-grained theoretical model and stochastic particle-based simulations of this mechanism, and we compare the results from these complementary approaches. Our results indicate that collisions that induce depolymerization are sufficient to generate the alignment of microtubules in the cortical array.
Highlights
Microtubules are a ubiquitous component of the cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells
In this Letter, we address the question of whether, as has been posited by Dixit and Cyr [5], these interactions are sufficient to explain the alignment of microtubules in the cortical array
We construct a model for the microtubule dynamics and interactions, and we evaluate it using two complementary approaches: a coarse-grained theory and particle-based simulations
Summary
Microtubules are a ubiquitous component of the cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells. These dynamic filamentous protein aggregates, in association with a host of microtubule associated proteins (MAPs), are able to selforganize into dynamic, spatially extended stable structures on the scale of the cell [1]. Because microtubules are nucleated isotropically and can change their orientation after each zippering event, we introduce separate densities for each segment index i. In light of the available evidence, we assume that the angle-dependent collision outcome probabilities Pz (zippering), Pc (induced catastrophe), and Px (crossover) are independent of the polarity of the microtubules and need only be defined on the interval
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