On the pressure exerted by a bundle of independent living filaments

Abstract

The properties of a bundle of grafted semi-flexible living filaments in ideal solution facing an obstacle wall, under supercritical conditions, are explored. For this purpose, we make use of the discrete wormlike chain model characterized by the monomer size $d$, a size dependent contour length $L_{\rm c}$ and a persistence length $l_{\rm p}$. The calculation of the equilibrium filament size distribution and the average equilibrium force require the knowledge of the wall effect on the single filament partition function of any size, which can be computed by Metropolis Monte-Carlo methods. The force exerted by a living filament on a fixed wall turns out to be the weighted average of the dead grafted filament forces computed for sizes hitting the wall, multiplied by the probability of occurrence of the corresponding filament size. As the distance to the wall is varied, the resultant force shows large variations whose amplitude decrease with increasing gap sizes and/or with decreasing persistence length. Also, its average over a gap interval of precise size $d$ gives an average force close to what is expected by the ratchet model for actin growth against a wall. The osmotic pressure exerted by $N_f$ filaments is the average equilibrium force per filament times the grafting surface density.