A chemomechanical bifurcation landscape unifies sustained growth, length homeostasis, and regenerative collapse in axons.

A mechanochemical model links bidirectional axonal transport delay and signaling feedback strength to a unified state-space that yields sustained growth, length homeostasis, or regenerative collapse.

• Why it matters: Existing length-sensing and biomechanical models treat transport and local force generation separately, leaving how shared axonal machinery produces divergent fates across contexts unexplained.
• What they did: The model couples motor transport and intracellular signaling to growth-cone balance of axonal tension, actomyosin contraction, and adhesion in one feedback loop, using transport delay and feedback strength as organizing parameters.
• The result: Reduced feedback strength weakens self-limiting mechanical feedback, and bistability in the inhibitory regime explains mature CNS tract persistence versus nascent sprout collapse, predicting partial retrograde transport inhibition may shift axons into a growth-permissive regime.

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