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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Jun 10.
Published in final edited form as: Annu Rev Biophys. 2016 Apr 29;45:85–116. doi: 10.1146/annurev-biophys-070915-094206

Figure 5.

Figure 5

Finite pool of subunits as a length-control mechanism. (a) Schematic of the model. We model a cell as a compartment with one filament (orange) and a fixed total number of subunits (N t, red and orange) within the compartment. The subunits that are not in the filament (red) are freely diffusing in the cell compartment. (b) The assembly rate of the filament [r = r′ (Nt − l), blue] decreases linearly with its length, due to the depletion of the free subunit pool. Coupled with a constant disassembly rate (γ, green), this process can lead to a well-defined steady-state length l*. (c) The steady-state length distribution is a peaked function around the mean filament length. For purposes of illustration, we chose the rates r′ = 0.51/(subunit − s), γ = 5/s, and Nt = 200 subunits.