Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 49: Posters - Cell Mechanics and Migration & Physics of Cancer

BP 49.13: Poster

Mittwoch, 9. März 2016, 17:00–19:00, Poster C

Regulation of muscle contraction by Drebrin-like protein 1 probed by atomic force microscopy — •Renata Garces, Eugenia Butkevich, Mitja Platen, and Christoph F. Schmidt — Third Institute of Physics-Biophysics, Georg August University, Göttingen, Germany

Sarcomeres are the fundamental contractile units of striated muscle cells. They are composed of a variety of structural and regulatory proteins functioning in a precisely orchestrated fashion to enable coordinated force generation in striated muscles.

Recently, we have identified a C. elegans drebrin-like protein 1 (DBN-1) as a novel sarcomere component, which stabilizes actin filaments during muscle contraction. To further characterize the function of DBN-1 in muscle cells, we generated a new dbn-1 loss-of-function allele. Absence of DBN-1 resulted in a unique worm movement phenotype, characterized by hyper-bending.

It is not clear yet if DBN-1 acts to enhance or reduce the capacity for contraction. We present here an experimental mechanical study on C. elegans muscle mechanics. We measured the stiffness of the worm by indenting living C. elegans with a micron-sized sphere adhered to the cantilever of an atomic force microscope (AFM). Modeling the worm as a pressurized elastic shell allows us to monitor the axial tension in the muscle through the measured stiffness. We compared responses of wild-type and mutant C. elegans in which DBN-1 is not expressed.