Fig. 4.

Filament‐length measurement of Vim‐WT and model‐derived assembly kinetics. (A) Vimentin (2 mg·mL⁻¹) was assembled at 22 °C for 5 min, and filaments were visualised by AFM. Filaments exhibited a mean length of ~ 190 nm, which corresponds to 4.0 ULF integrated on average into filaments at this time point. (B) Calculation of the time‐dependent filament‐length generation over time (red line) with the help of the value determined at 5 min (red square) and the elongation constant described previously [28]. (C) Decay in the number of free filament ends (purple line) due to end‐to‐end joining of filaments during the assembly process. The values were calculated using the number of filaments determined in (B). The purple square indicates the time point of the filament‐length measurement and is equivalent to the red square in (B). Bar in (A): 1 μm. The results are representative of the experiments performed in duplicate.