Figure 2
(a) Energies
(in
) of dimers and trimers versus
, the radius of the layer to which it is bound to, in the Z ring.
includes the curvature energy and the polymerization energy, both of which are composition dependent. Energies of all other trimers (
,
,
, etc.) and oligomers can be inferred from the ones which are plotted. Contributions from lateral attraction energy (
) are not included in
since it depends on the number of occupied sites in the radially neighboring layers. The plot indicates that
oligomers (
, etc.) have lesser energy when they are bound to the ring compared to when they are free in the cytoplasm. For example, while passing from the cytoplasm to the ring a
dimer looses on curvature energy [
, for
] but gains more in lateral attraction energy (
). It further gains in polymerization energy if it finds neighbors on the same layer of the Z ring on which it lands. While for
-rich oligomers (
,
,
, etc.) the situation is just the opposite: their energy reduces when they depolymerize from the ring. (b) Shows average ring thickness (nm) versus time (min) for three separate runs, with different parameter sets a, b, and c. The inset shows average outer radius (
) of the ring versus time and sets a, b, c gave similar decay profiles. Sets a, b, c differ in hydrolysis rate, number of layers started with, and ratio of polymers to monomer in the poly- and depolymerization trials. All the runs took nearly
MC steps and were calibrated to total 10 min of contraction time.
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