Cytoskeleton Dynamics: A Continuum Cooperative Hydrolysis Model*

Abstract

Abstract Cytoskeleton is a network of filamentous proteins, such as actin filaments and microtubules. We propose a continuum cooperative hydrolysis model which possesses exactly analytical solution to describe the dynamics of filament. The results show that the cooperativity leads to non negative-exponential distribution of T (ATP or GTP) subunits. As an application, we investigate the treadmilling phenomenon using our model. It is shown that the cooperativity remarkably affects the length of filament.