"Phase Transitions in the Cytoskeleton"
Dr. Itamar Borukhov
Dept. of Materials and Interfaces, The Weizmann Institute of Science
The cellular cytoskeleton relies on structural elements formed from
F-actin, a highly charged, stiff biopolymer, linked together by
actin-binding proteins (linkers) that can bind two actin filaments
together. The resulting structures can have very different morphologies,
depending on the concentrations of biopolymers and linkers. In crawling
cells such as blood platelets, F-actin primarily assembles into a network
but can alternatively assemble into bundles; this is important to cell
motility and adhesion. This suggests that the system could be near a phase
transition between networks and bundles. I will present a theoretical
study that elucidates the physical mechanisms that control these
structures and their stability. The study is based on a generalized
Onsager theory that includes linker-mediated attractions between charged
filaments, and that yields phase diagrams as a function of actin
concentration and linker concentration.
Host: Prof. David Andelman, x7239
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