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Actin is a key component of the cytoskeleton, which plays central roles incell motility, division, growth, and tensile strength. To enable this widerange of transient mechanical processes and properties, networks of actinfilaments continuously disassemble and reassemble via activede/re-polymerization. However, the question remains as to howde/re-polymerization kinetics of individual actin filaments translate totime-varying mechanics of dis/re-assembling networks. To address this question,to ultimately elucidate the molecular mechanisms that enable cells to exhibit amyriad of transitory mechanical properties, we couple time-resolved activemicrorheology with microfluidics to measure the time-varying viscoelasticmoduli of entangled and crosslinked actin networks during chemically-triggerednetwork disassembly and reassembly. We also develop a correspondingmathematical model that relates the time-evolution of filament length to theresulting time-dependent storage moduli of evolving networks. Duringdisassembly, we find that the moduli exhibit two distinct exponential decays,with experimental time constants of $\sim$169 and $\sim$47 min, which we showarises from a phase transition from a rigid percolated network to a non-rigidregime occurring after $\sim$90 min. During reassembly, measured moduli exhibitlinear increase with time for $\sim$90 min, after which steady-state values areachieved. Our theoretical model shows that reassembly mechanics are dominatedby elongation kinetics, and that elongation rates are much slower than has beenrecently assumed. Our measurements shed much needed light onto howpolymerization kinetics map to time-varying mechanics of actively evolvingcytoskeleton networks, and provide a powerful platform for studying otheractive and dynamic systems currently under intense investigation.

Active Disassembly and Reassembly of Actin Networks Induces Distinct Biphasic Mechanics