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Updated: May 29, 2026

Using Microfluidics and Fluorescence Microscopy to Study the Assembly Dynamics of Single Actin Filaments and Bundles
Published on: May 5, 2022
Polymerization of actin filaments coupled with adenosine triphosphate hydrolysis: Brownian dynamics and theoretical
Kunkun Guo1, Wenjia Xiao, Dong Qiu
1College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China. kunkunguo@hnu.edu.cn
Abstract:
Polymerization dynamics of single actin filaments coupled with adenosine triphosphate (ATP) hydrolysis is investigated via both theoretical analysis and Brownian dynamics simulations. Brownian dynamics simulations have been applied recently to study the growth behaviors of long filaments as a function of the free actin monomer concentrations, C(T), which is found to be in agreement with the associated experiments. In the present study, both ATP cap length and length diffusivity are studied as a function of the free ATP-actin monomer concentrations, C(T). The exact analytical expressions are found to be in perfect consistency with Brownian dynamics simulations. Likewise, we find that the length diffusion coefficient is peaked near the critical concentration, C(T,cr). It is, therefore, expected that the dependence of length diffusivity on ATP-actin monomer concentrations is utilized to analyze the surprising experiments on the length fluctuations of individual actin filaments.
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