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. (C) 2014 American Association of Physics Teachers.