A first-passage-time theory for search and capture of chromosomes by microtubules in mitosis.

The mitotic spindle is an important intermediate structure in eukaryotic cell division, in which each of a pair of duplicated chromosomes is attached through microtubules to centrosomal bodies located close to the two poles of the dividing cell. Several mechanisms are at work toward the formation of the spindle, one of which is the 'capture' of chromosome pairs, held together by kinetochores, by randomly searching microtubules. Although the entire cell cycle can be up to 24 hours long, the mitotic phase typically takes only less than an hour.

Steady states of a microtubule assembly in a confined geometry.

We study the steady state of an assembly of microtubules in a confined volume, analogous to the situation inside a cell where the cell boundary forms a natural barrier to growth. We show that the dynamical equations for growing and shrinking microtubules predict the existence of two steady states, with either exponentially decaying or exponentially increasing distribution of microtubule lengths. We identify the regimes in parameter space corresponding to these steady states.