Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 25: Posters: Cytoskeleton
BP 25.19: Poster
Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 17:30–19:30, Poster C
Actin Dynamics in Myosin II-null Dictyostelium Discoideum — Hsin-Fang Hsu1,4, •Christian Westendorf1,4, Carsten Beta2, and Eberhard Bodenschatz1,3,4 — 1Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Goettingen, Germany — 2Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany — 3Laboratory of Atomic and Solid-State Physics, Cornell University, USA — 4Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics, Georg-August University, Goettingen, Germany
Starved D. discoideum show chemotaxis to cAMP. The directed migration is driven by the assembly and disassembly of actin filaments. In addition to the actin dynamics the contraction of Myosin II plays an important role in the effective movement. Cells lacking Myosin II show frequent protrusions of the membrane. Here we investigate the dynamics of actin filament (labeled by LimE-GFP) in the AX2 cells without Myosin II heavy chain. We observed Myosin II mutants show spontaneous periodic actin dynamics even without external stimulation of cAMP. We further investigate this phenomenon by perturbing the system with different periodic pulses of cAMP created by flow photolysis. Our observation showed Myosin mutants show more instability of actin networks than wild-type cells.