Scale dependence of mechanics and dynamics of active gels with increasing motor concentration

The cytoskeleton protein actin assembles into large bundles when supporting stresses in the cell, but grows into a fine branched network to induce cell motion. Such self-organization processes are studied in artificial networks of cytoskeleton proteins with thick actin bundles and large motor protei...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2018-06
Main Authors: Sonn-Segev, Adar, Bernheim-Groswasser, Anne, Roichman, Yael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggregates
Assemblies
Bundles
Bundling
Crosslinking
Cytoskeleton
Dependence
Gels
Mechanical properties
Molecular motors
Networks
Proteins
Stiffness
Variation
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Summary:The cytoskeleton protein actin assembles into large bundles when supporting stresses in the cell, but grows into a fine branched network to induce cell motion. Such self-organization processes are studied in artificial networks of cytoskeleton proteins with thick actin bundles and large motor protein aggregates to enable optical observation. The effect of motor aggregate size on the cytoskeleton mechanical properties is studied here in networks comprised of much smaller motor assemblies. Large motor protein clusters are known to increase the stiffness of actin based networks by introducing tension and additional cross-linking cites. We find that these effects are universal to actin gels regardless of actin bundle thickness and motor aggregate size and are relevant, therefore, to a wide range of cytoskeleton based cellular processes. In contrast, motor induced active fluctuations depend significantly on motor assembly size, featuring unique non-Gaussian statistics at high concentrations of small assemblies.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1609.04163