Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 25: Posters - Cytoskeletal Filaments

BP 25.3: Poster

Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 14:00–16:00, P2-EG

A Time-Resolved Study of Intermediate Filament Assembly — •Manuela Denz, Gerrit Brehm, Clément Hémonnot, Andrew Wittmeier, Oliva Saldanha, Charlotta Lorenz, and Sarah Köster — Institute of X-Ray Physics, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

The cytoskeleton of eukaryotes is primarily composed of three different types of filaments, namely microfilaments (MF, diameter 8 nm), microtubules (MT, diameter 25 nm) and intermediate filaments (IF, diameter 10 nm) along with cross-linkers and motor proteins. The assembly of IFs follows, in contrast to the MF and MT assembly, a hierarchical pathway and is not nucleotide driven. Furthermore, the resulting filaments lack polarity. For different IF types, the assembly process underlies the same general model, however, the details may vary. For example, two monomers of the most studied IF protein vimentin first assemble into a homodimer, whereas the monomers of another IF protein, keratin, form heterodimers. Until now, the assembly process of IFs in not completely known. Therefore, this project aims on studying the assembly of keratin and vimentin. Experiments are performed using a combination of small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and microfluidics. To do so, we first test different microfluidic device types by characterizing them with gold colloids. In a second step, we analyze the weaker-scattering proteins. With the above mentioned combination of techniques we are able to perform time-resolved studies and gain deeper insights into the assembly process of IFs.