Quantitative Signatures of Disassembly Mechanisms Modulating Filament and Bundle Assembly in a Shared Pool

Abstract

How cytoskeletal structures control their assembly while sharing a common pool of their constituent parts is an open question in biology. Experiments indicate that mechanisms promoting the disassembly of these structures and replenishing the pool may play a vital role. Here, we compare the role of two modes of disassembly: monomer loss and loss of fragments (severing), in the assembly of bare filaments and bundles, modeled as a collection of linear filaments. Using analytical calculations and simulations, we show that severing can accelerate the assembly of these structures and ensure their precise size control in a shared pool. We also examine their length fluctuations and find that the decay in the autocorrelation function is faster with severing. Our study identifies parameters that influence assembly kinetics as well as the decay in autocorrelations of length fluctuations. These findings provide a framework for designing experiments that can differentiate between size control mechanisms in cytoskeletal structures.