Figure 1

Schematic representation of the model. Left panel illustrates a low magnification drawing of monomers on the triangular lattice forming filaments with different degrees of aggregation and curvature. The right panel shows a close look at the region enclosed in a rectangle in the right panel illustrating the 1.5 nm triangular lattice spacing, the vector used to define the monomer orientation, from the minus (T7 loop-region) to the plus end (GTP binding site), and the region around the excluding core where attractive interactions are present. The stronger longitudinal bonding interaction U _b applies when the orientations of two consecutive monomers is aligned within 30 degrees (see Additional file 1 for more details).