title: Branching, capping, and severing in dynamic actin structures.
abstract: Branched actin networks at the leading edge of a crawling cell evolve via protein-regulated processes such as polymerization, depolymerization, capping, branching, and severing. A formulation of these processes is presented and analyzed to study steady-state network morphology. In bulk, we identify several scaling regimes in severing and branching protein concentrations and find that the coupling between severing and branching is optimally exploited for conditions in vivo. Near the leading edge, we find qualitative agreement with the in vivo morphology.
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Sciences, University of California, Merced, California 95344, USA.
authors.forename: Ajay
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gopinathan
authors.forename: Kun-Chun
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Schwarz
authors.forename: Andrea J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000199:Actins / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D000199:Actins