Figure 5.

Snapshots of equilibrated MC simulations on a cylinder. Snapshots of equilibrated MC simulations on a cylinder. We use 10000 monomers in panel (b) and 2400 in all the other panels, which represents a surface density for FtsZ comparable to the one estimated in vivo [3]. (a-b) The interaction parameters extracted from AFM images on planar surfaces are directly used on the cylindrical lattice. (c) Symmetric bending energies βU_± = 1, and U_a and U_b as in the planar case. (d) U_a, U₊ and U_- are kept as in the planar model values and a weak off-plane spontaneous curvature is added (see file 1). (e) Bonding energy U_b decreased by 2.5% away from a central cylindrical segment(see Additional file 1). (f) Similar to (e) but with a central deformation of a cylinder (see text and Additional file 1). All the observed structures were spontaneously formed from an initial random distribution of the monomers. The hemispherical caps are plotted to represent the bacterial shape, but the actual MC simulations were done with toroidal boundary conditions.