Stoichiometric Model for the Microtubule-mediated dynamics of centrosome and nucleus

The Stoichiometric Model for the interaction of centrosomes with cortically anchored pulling motors, through their associated microtubules (MTs), has been applied to study key steps in the cell division such as spindle positioning and elongation. In this work we extend the original Stoichiometric Model to incorporate (1) overlap in the cortical motors, and (2) the dependence of velocity in the detachment rate of MTs from the cortical motors. We examine the effects of motor overlap and velocity-dependent detachment rate on the centrosome dynamics, such as the radial oscillation around the geometric center of the cell, the nonlinear nature (supercritical and subcritical Hopf bifurcation) of such oscillation, and the nonlinear orbital motions previously found for a centrosome. We explore biologically feasible parameter regimes where these effects may lead to significantly different centrosome/nucleus dynamics. Furthermore we use this extended Stoichiometric Model to study the migration of a nucleus being positioned by a centrosome. This is joint work with Justin Maramuthal, Libin Liu, Reza Farhadifar, Alex Barnet and Michael Shelley.