Dresden 2014 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 7: Posters: Cell adhesion, mechanics and migration

BP 7.36: Poster

Montag, 31. März 2014, 17:30–19:30, P3

Theory on active stress of a cortical cytoskeletal network — •Tetsuya Hiraiwa — Department of Physics, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany

Active mechanics of a cortical cytoskeleton, which is a network consisting of actin filaments, myosin motor filaments and passive crosslinker proteins located underneath the cell membrane, plays crucial roles in dynamic cellular behaviors, such as cytokinesis and cell migration. In both a living cell and a reconstituted system, a cortical cytoskeleton behaves as active contractile gel. To understand mechanical property of such an active cortical cytoskeletal gel, we have theoretically studied on their active stress from a microscopic point of view. In this poster, we present an essential mechanical model of a cortical cytoskeletal network, and share with you our results on its spontaneously yielded active stress. In particular, since a cortical cytoskeleton in a living cell shows hydrodynamic characteristics, we consider the non-rigid network, in which there are few amount of crosslinkers and/or the crosslinkers can undergo turnover. We found that this system shows the crossover between the extensile and contractile states in terms of stress at a finite amount of passive crosslinkers, and hence would like to emphasize the significance of passive crosslinker proteins for the present mechanism of active contractility.