Actin-based Motility: Cellular, Molecular and Physical Aspects

By: Marie-France Carlier

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Synopsis: This book presents the cellular, molecular and physical aspects of production of force and movement by self-assembly of actin, one of the most abundant protein in cells, into cytoskeletal filaments. « Actin-based motile processes » are responsible for a very large variety of motile activities of cells in their physiological and pathological states, covering chemotactic locomotion, embryonic and metastatic cell migration, wound healing, eukaryotic cytokinesis and bacterial plasmid segregation, endocytic and phagocytic activities, as well as morphogenetic processes like axis patterning in early embryo, axonal growth in brain development, immune response and synaptic plasticity processes at the origin of learning and memory. The different chapters of the book describe how the multidisciplinary multiscale approaches taken in the recent years have explored the molecular and physical mechanisms at the origin of force and movement produced by actin self-assembly. The chosen topics show how advances have been made in the field of cell motility due to progress in live cell imaging, light microscopy, improved resolution in the structure of large protein assemblies, biochemical analysis and mathematical modeling of actin assembly dynamics and development of nanotechnologies allowing to measure forces in the range of pico- to nano-newton produced by actin assemblies.