addition*. However, the presence of the *body evaporation and addition* pathway does not affect the dependence of the lag time on the total monomer concentration and it remains the same as that for the case of *end evaporation and addition*. The scaling of the lag time with the forward rate is different for the two models, suggesting that they may be distinguished experimentally.'
author:
- 'Nitin S. Tiwari'
- Paul van der Schoot
title: 'On the Kinetics of Body *versus* End Evaporation and Addition of Supramolecular Polymers'
---

Introduction {#sec1}
============

Supramolecular polymerisation processes are of immense importance in biology and in chemistry. [@tomdegreef] Some classic examples in biology include actin and microtubule self-assembly that play important roles in the context of the mechanics of the cell, and $\beta-$amyloid and prion protein aggregation implicated in neuro-degenerative diseases. [@takalo; @blanchoin; @fletcher; @chiti; @murphy] Similarly, supramolecular polymerisation has major applications in the chemistry of medicine and in molecular electronics. [@aida] In this light, it is not surprising that researchers have long studied the thermodynamic and kinetics of self-assembly. As the time evolution of self-assembly is very much system specific, in particular the early time kinetics, itself the most extensively studied aspect of 