Microtubules and molecular motors can work cooperatively to construct a mitotic spindle – a complex structure that orchestrates many spatiotemporal processes during cell division.
The central part of the spindle contains nematically aligned microtubules organized by sliding motors, while closer to the spindle poles, filaments are focused by clustering motors and can form radial arrays.
I will try to shed light on the mitotic spindle self-assembly using the Boltzmann formalism and Landau theory. In Particular, we will discuss how to derive macroscopic hydrodynamic equations by coarse-graining the interactions between individual elements and how to construct a phenomenological continuum model of spindle formation.