A general mathematical model for the in vitro assembly dynamics of intermediate filament proteins.

ABSTRACT: Intermediate filament (IF) proteins assemble into highly flexible filaments that organize into complex cytoplasmic networks: keratins in all types of epithelia, vimentin in endothelia, and desmin in muscle. Since IF elongation proceeds via end-to-end annealing of unit-length filaments and successively of progressively growing filaments, it is important to know how their remarkable flexibility, i.e., their persistence length l_p, influences the assembly kinetics. In fact, their l_p ranges between 0.3 μm (keratin K8/K18) and 1.0 μm (vimentin and desmin), and thus is orders of magnitude lower than that of microtubules and F-actin. Here, we present a unique mathematical model, which implements the semiflexible nature of the three IF types based on published semiflexible pol

SUBMITTER: Mucke N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8943748 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature