About the Authors

Yilin Wu

Affiliations Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America , Center for the Study of Biocomplexity, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America

Yi Jiang

Affiliation Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States of America

Dale Kaiser

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America

Mark Alber

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: malber@nd.edu

Affiliations Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America , Center for the Study of Biocomplexity, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America , Department of Mathematics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

DK formulated biological questions and provided experimental data. YW, YJ, and MA designed the off-lattice stochastic model. YW performed simulations and, with YJ, DK, and MA, interpreted the results. YW, YJ, DK, and MA wrote the paper.