This is a simulation of dendritic actin growth pushing a solid barrier, which might be a stand-in for a section of membrane in a motile cell or a L. monocytogenes rod shaped bacteria. Motion of the barrier is NOT forced-based, as it is in simulations such at RocketBugs, but rather the barrier simple tracks the leading edge of the polymerizing filaments. Filaments, meanwhile, will only branch within a specified user-changeable distance from the barrier, and require a minimum gap-size to polymerize. Explore the "Change" menu options to see what parameters you can vary. I'd really like to more formally deal with the polymerization probabilities, ala Schaus and Borisy (2008). Once that change is made, this code could be used to test some of their results in 3D... I'm fairly certain, for example, that the average branching angle in 3D will NOT be the +/- 35 degrees that they find in their 2D study from 2007.

If you're running the source or JAR file, you may need to allocate a large max heap size. If you're running a platform specific application, I've already done this for you. A large heap lets you instantiate very many filaments, which you may want to do.

For example, type "java -Xmx800M ActinScope" or "java -Xmx800M -jar ActinScope.jar" to allocate a 800 MB max heap with the source or JAR file, respectively.