Regensburg 2019 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 19: Focus session: Physics of cilia: Dynamics of synchronized oscillators
BP 19.2: Talk
Wednesday, April 3, 2019, 15:30–15:45, H11
Toward synthetic cilia: bending oscillations of a microtubule-dynein system — •Isabella Guido1, Ramin Golestanian1, Andrej Vilfan1, Eberhard Bodenschatz1, and Kazuhiro Oiwa2 — 1Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization, Göttingen, Germany — 2National Institute of Information and Communications Technology , Kobe, Japan
Cilia and flagella produce rapid and regular bending waves responsible for the propulsion of organisms in fluids or for the promotion of fluid transport. It is known that the main contribution to their beating is due to motor proteins, dynein, which drives sliding of the microtubule doublets. However, the fundamental mechanism of the dynein-microtubule interaction is still a puzzle. Here we investigate their mechanical interaction and emergent behavior by analyzing a minimal synthetic system that we experimentally assemble with two microtubules and few dynein motors. We observe that the microtubule pair undergoes cyclical association/dissociation interaction through rhythmic bending, followed by a complete detachment of the microtubules and subsequent re-attachment. By considering the shearing force produced by the motors when they move along the adjacent microtubule and the finite elasticity of the system, we describe this beating cycle in terms of the curvature and dynein-microtubule binding force.
This work is supported by the BMBF and MPG through the MaxSynBio initiative.