Macromolecular crowding: effects on actin polymerisation

Dextran has been found to enhance the polymerisation of actin. This enhancement increases exponentially with increasing mass concentrations of dextran, in a manner that is consistent with excluded volume theory. Mathematical prediction of experimental results is difficult due to the fact that all participating species, namely F-actin, G-actin and dextran are best represented by differently shaped hard particles. Modelling dextran as a sphere of radius defined by an effective thermodynamic radius (Reff), we have predicted our experimental results to an acceptable degree, given the relative crudity of the model. The results imply that the highly crowded cellular environment may help to stabilise the filamentous actin network in vivo.