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  • Limited Resources Induce Bi...
    Rank, Matthias; Mitra, Aniruddha; Reese, Louis; Diez, Stefan; Frey, Erwin

    Physical review letters, 2018-Apr-06, Letnik: 120, Številka: 14
    Journal Article

    The availability of protein is an important factor for the determination of the size of the mitotic spindle. Involved in spindle-size regulation is kinesin-8, a molecular motor and microtubule (MT) depolymerase, which is known to tightly control MT length. Here, we propose and analyze a theoretical model in which kinesin-induced MT depolymerization competes with spontaneous polymerization while supplies of both tubulin and kinesin are limited. In contrast to previous studies where resources were unconstrained, we find that, for a wide range of concentrations, MT length regulation is bistable. We test our predictions by conducting in vitro experiments and find that the bistable behavior manifests in a bimodal MT length distribution.