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Crosslinking actin networks produces compressive force
Author(s) -
Ma Rui,
Berro Julien
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
cytoskeleton
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.95
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1949-3592
pISSN - 1949-3584
DOI - 10.1002/cm.21552
Subject(s) - turgor pressure , actin , biophysics , endocytosis , biology , stiffness , brownian dynamics , brownian motion , exocytosis , polymerization , membrane , mechanics , materials science , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry , physics , polymer , composite material , quantum mechanics , cell
Actin has been shown to be essential for clathrin‐mediated endocytosis in yeast. However, actin polymerization alone is likely insufficient to produce enough force to deform the membrane against the huge turgor pressure of yeast cells. In this paper, we used Brownian dynamics simulations to demonstrate that crosslinking of a meshwork of nonpolymerizing actin filaments is able to produce compressive forces. We show that the force can be up to several thousand pico‐Newtons if the crosslinker has a high stiffness. The force decays over time as a result of crosslinker turnover, and is a result of converting chemical binding energy into elastic energy.