Dresden 2014 – scientific programme
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 33: Cytoskeleton (original: BP, joined by CPP)
CPP 33.2: Talk
Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 10:00–10:15, HÜL 386
Keratin 8/18 Networks and their Interplay with Different Crosslinkers — •Ines Martin1, Tobias Neckernuss1, Tobias Paust1, Michael Beil2, Harald Herrmann3, and Othmar Marti1 — 1Department of Experimental Physics, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany — 2Clinic of Internal Medicine I, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany — 3Division of Molecular Genetics, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
The keratin 8/18 dimer is a structural building block of intermediate filaments (IFs), which are basic constituents of the cytoskeleton in epithelial cells. They are responsible for the stiffness of cells and responses to mechanical stimuli. The understanding of the cytoskeleton is for example important for the characterization of the movement of metastasizing cells.
Keratin filaments can be crosslinked by proteins like plectin, which also link IFs to hemidesmosomes as well as to different constituents of the cytoskeleton. Additionally Keratins can be bundled by ions like MgCl2 or KCl. In this work we assembled keratin 8/18 together with plectin, KCl and MgCl2 in vitro to form crosslinked networks. We checked the resulting networks with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Immuno-Gold-Labeling. With this we were able to identify the position of plectin molecules. The viscoelastic network properties were measured by passive microrheology and we compared in vitro assembled networks without crosslinker and with KCl, MgCl2 and plectin.