Modelling cellular spreading and emergence of motility in the presence of curved membrane proteins and active cytoskeleton forces

by Prof. Nir Gov

Department Of Chemical And Biological Physics, Weizmann Institute Of Science

at Biological and soft-matter physics

Thu, 11 Mar 2021, 12:10
ZOOM only - Meeting ID: 874 2021 0979

Abstract

Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that has uniform adhesion energy with a flat substrate, mobile curved membrane proteins and active forces. We find that a high concentration of curved proteins alone increases the spreading of the vesicle, by the self-organization of the curved proteins at the high curvature vesicle-substrate contact line, thereby reducing the bending energy penalty at the vesicle rim. This is most significant in the regime of low bare vesicle-substrate adhesion. When these curved proteins induce active protrusive forces, representing the actin cytoskeleton, we find efficient spreading, in the form of sheet-like lamellipodia. Finally, the same mechanism of spreading is found to include a minimal set of ingredients needed to give rise to motile phenotypes (see:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.02.425086v1 ).

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Meeting ID: 874 2021 0979

Created on 22-02-2021 by Granek, Rony (rgranek)
Updaded on 11-03-2021 by Granek, Rony (rgranek)