Actin-based Motility, 2010 Cellular, Molecular and Physical Aspects

Since the discovery of actin by Straub in the 1950?s and the pioneering work of Oosawa on actin self-assembly in helical laments in the 1960?s, many books and conference proceedings have been published. As one of the most essential p- teins in life, essential for movement in organisms rangingfrom bacteria to higher eukaryotes, it is no surprise that actin has fascinated generations of scientists from many different elds. Actin can be considered as a ?living treasure? of biology; the kinetics and thermodynamics of self-assembly, the dissipative nature of actin po- merization, the molecular interactions of monomeric and polymerized actin with regulators, the mechanical properties of actin gels, and more recently the force p- ducing motile and morphogenetic processes organized by the actin nanomachine in response to signaling, are all milestones in actin research. Discoveries that directly derive from and provide deeper insight into the fundamental properties of actin are constantly being made, making actin an ever appealing research molecule. At the same time, the explosion in new technologies and techniques in biological sciences has served to attract researchers from an expanding number of disciplines, to study actin. This book presents the latest developments of these new multiscale approaches of force and movement powered by self-assembly processes, with the hope to opening our perspectives on the many areas of actin-based motility research.

Cellular Aspects.- Elementary Cellular Processes Driven by Actin Assembly: Lamellipodia and Filopodia.- Coupling Membrane Dynamics to Actin Polymerization.- Endocytic Control of Actin-based Motility.- Actin in Clathrin-Mediated Endocytosis.- Actin Cytoskeleton and the Dynamics of Immunological Synapse.- Actin-based Motile Processes in Tumor Cell Invasion.- Actin-based Chromosome Movements in Cell Division.- Roles for Actin Dynamics in Cell Movements During Development.- Molecular Aspects.- Regulation of the Cytoplasmic Actin Monomer Pool in Actin-based Motility.- From Molecules to Movement: In Vitro Reconstitution of Self-Organized Actin-based Motile Processes.- The WASP-Homology 2 Domain and Cytoskeleton Assembly.- Formin-Mediated Actin Assembly.- Visualization of Individual Actin Filament Assembly.- Movement of Cargo in Bacterial Cytoplasm: Bacterial Actin Dynamics Drives Plasmid Segregation.- Physical Aspects.- Protrusive Forces Generated by Dendritic Actin Networks During Cell Crawling.- Mathematical and Physical Modeling of Actin Dynamics in Motile Cells.- Force Production by Actin Assembly: Simplified Experimental Systems for a Thorough Modeling.

Covers insights coming from the various disciplines (cell biology, biochemistry, biophysics and theoretical modelling) that have contributed, in the past ten years, in understanding actin-based motility The application of the latest scientific techniques in the unraveling of cell motility A comprehensive understanding of actin-based cell motility