Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Schuppler, Matthias
• Keber, Felix C.
• Kröger, Martin
• Bausch, Andreas R.

Titel

Boundaries steer the contraction of active gels

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2016-10, Vol.7 (1), p.13120-13120, Article 13120

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Quelle

Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek - Freely accessible e-journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Cells set up contractile actin arrays to drive various shape changes and to exert forces to their environment. To understand their assembly process, we present here a reconstituted contractile system, comprising F-actin and myosin II filaments, where we can control the local activation of myosin by light. By stimulating different symmetries, we show that the force balancing at the boundaries determine the shape changes as well as the dynamics of the global contraction. Spatially anisotropic attachment of initially isotropic networks leads to a self-organization of highly aligned contractile fibres, being reminiscent of the order formation in muscles or stress fibres. The observed shape changes and dynamics are fully recovered by a minimal physical model. The actomyosin cytoskeleton consists of a contractile array but how it becomes organized is not clear. Here the authors reconstitute a controllable contractile system to show that force balances at boundaries determine contraction dynamics, and spatial anisotropy leads to self-organization or aligned contractile fibres.