Catalytic growth in a shared enzyme pool ensures robust control of centrosome size

Abstract

Accurate regulation of centrosome size is essential for ensuring error-free cell division, and dysregulation of centrosome size has been linked to various pathologies, including developmental defects and cancer. While previous studies have mostly focused on investigating the growth dynamics of individual centrosomes, how a pair of centrosomes achieves equal size prior to cell division remains an open question. Here, we challenge the existing theory that centrosome growth is autocatalytic, as this model fails to explain the attainment of equal centrosome sizes. By incorporating recent experimental findings on the molecular mechanisms governing centrosome assembly, we propose a new mechanistic theory for centrosome growth involving catalytic assembly within a shared pool of enzymes. Our model successfully achieves robust size equality between maturing centrosome pairs, mirroring cooperative growth dynamics observed in experiments. To validate our theoretical predictions, we compare them with available experimental data and demonstrate the broad applicability of the catalytic growth model across different organisms, which exhibit distinct growth dynamics and size scaling characteristics.