Mean-field master equation formalism for biofilament growth

Nucleated polymerization is a general one-dimensional growth process that is commonly encountered as the mechanism of formation of protein filaments of fundamental importance to normal and aberrant biology. We discuss a mean-field description of this process. We formulate the problem in terms of a master equation and discuss approaches to reduce the infinite-dimensional master equation to a finite-dimensional system by considering the moments of the length distribution. We then present example solutions of the moment equations in several cases of practical importance.

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