Open AccessA strong nonequilibrium bound for sorting of cross-linkers on growing biopolymers
Author(s) -
Yuqing Qiu,
Michael Nguyen,
Glen M. Hocky,
Aaron R. Dinner,
Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2102881118
Subject(s) - non equilibrium thermodynamics , actin , bundle , protein filament , cytoskeleton , actin cytoskeleton , physics , biophysics , biological system , statistical physics , chemistry , biology , materials science , thermodynamics , microbiology and biotechnology , cell , biochemistry , composite material
Understanding the role of nonequilibrium driving in self-organization is crucial for developing a predictive description of biological systems, yet it is impeded by their complexity. The actin cytoskeleton serves as a paradigm for how equilibrium and nonequilibrium forces combine to give rise to self-organization. Motivated by recent experiments that show that actin filament growth rates can tune the morphology of a growing actin bundle cross-linked by two competing types of actin-binding proteins [S. L. Freedman et al. , Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116, 16192-16197 (2019)], we construct a minimal model for such a system and show that the dynamics of a growing actin bundle are subject to a set of thermodynamic constraints that relate its nonequilibrium driving, morphology, and molecular fluxes. The thermodynamic constraints reveal the importance of correlations between these molecular fluxes and offer a route to estimating microscopic driving forces from microscopy experiments.