A coarse-grained approach to model the dynamics of the actomyosin cortex

Here, we present a coarse grained model of a two-dimensional actomyosin cortex, adjacent to a three-dimensional cytoplasm. Our simplified model incorporates only well characterized interactions between actin monomers, actin crosslinkers and myosin, and it is able to reproduce many of the most important aspects of actin filament and actomyosin network formation, such as dynam- ics of polymerization and depolymerization, treadmilling, network formation and the autonomous oscillatory dynamics of actomyosin.