Dresden 2017 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 25: Posters - Cytoskeletal Filaments

BP 25.7: Poster

Dienstag, 21. März 2017, 14:00–16:00, P2-EG

Force-dependent Self-Assembly of Myosin II Minifilaments — •Justin Grewe and Ulrich S. Schwarz — Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg, Germany

Non-muscle myosin II plays an important role in cytokinesis and cell migration by generating tension in the actin cytoskeleton. Because myosin II is a non-processive motor, it cannot generate appreciable levels of force by itself, but needs to work in larger ensembles. In non-muscle cells, it assembles into myosin II minifilaments, which are approximately 300 nm large and contain around 30 myosin II molecules.

In order to investigate the coupling between myosin II self-assembly and force generation, we introduce a crossbridge model. Using mean-field methods the qualitative behavior of the theoretical model is investigated and compared to stochastic simulations.

The catch-slip bond that is introduced in the model leads to a bimodal distribution of minifilament sizes when retaining a constant force, where minifilaments attached to actin are larger than the ones that are not attached. This is a reasonable mechanism that could be used by nature to efficiently utilize a given amount of motor proteins to retain a force.