Regensburg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 13: Cytoskeleton

BP 13.7: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 7. September 2022, 11:30–11:45, H15

Influence of vimentin intermediate filaments on microtubules in cells — •Anna Blob¹, Roman David Ventzke^{1, 2}, Carolin Schlein¹, Laura Schaedel³, Axel Munk², and Sarah Köster¹ — ¹Institute for X-Ray Physics, University of Göttingen — ²Institute for Mathematical Stochastics, University of Göttingen — ³Center for Biophysics, Saarland University

The cytoskeleton in eucaryotic cells is an intricate network of three different filamentous proteins: microtubules, actin filaments and intermediate filaments. Together, they are essential for the mechanical properties as well as important functions of the cell, such as intracellular transport and division. Each protein has it own unique properties and there is evidence for important interactions between them. It has been shown that vimentin intermediate filaments stabilize microtubules in vitro and can template the microtubule network in migrating cells. Following up on this idea, we are interested in the influence of vimentin networks on microtubule mechanics. Cellular microtubules show characteristic buckling and bending behavior that is still not fully understood. Investigating the role of vimentin for the bending of microtubules will improve our understanding of the mechanical consequences and importance of the interactions between these filament systems. We compare microtubule networks in vimentin-knockout and wildtype mouse fibroblasts on micropatterns. Microscopy images are processed and analyzed with respect to the curvature of microtubules. We find that the local curvature of microtubules depends on the cellular region and increases with increasing vimentin density.