Cytoskeleton and Cell Motility Models

Ivan Maly graduated from Moscow State University with a diploma in Physiology. He earned his doctoral degree in the Life Sciences from Northwestern University. After a research stint at MIT, he became a founding member of the Department of Computational Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The functional structure of biological cells is largely determined by the cytoskeleton, and by the motility that is driven and guided by the cytoskeleton. The accumulated empiric knowledge of the dynamics of the cytoskeleton and cytoskeleton- based motility requires theoretical analysis for systematic knowledge representation and interpretation, and also to provide a framework for the future experimental research. In this monograph, selected kinetic models of the cytoskeleton dynamics and related motility phenomena are formulated and analyzed. In each model, prominent elements of the spatial organization of the cell are derived from the kinetics of the processes involved. Several phenomena are studied that are mechanistically connected and can be explored using similar theoretical approaches. The unifying approach is calculation of the evolution and steady states of probability distributions in the spaces of various dimensions that describe the dynamic structure. The book is aimed at biologists and other scientists interested in deductive and quantitative explanation of the cell structure.