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An in vitro model system for cytoskeletal confinement
Journal
Cell Motility And The Cytoskeleton
Volume
66
Number
10
Pages / Article-Number
771-6
Keywords
actin, single filament, end-to-end distribution, radial distribution function, persistence length, microfluidics, confinement
Abstract
The motility, shape, and functionality of the cell depend sensitively on cytoskeletal mechanics which in turn is governed by the properties of filamentous proteins mainly actin, microtubules, and intermediate filaments. These biopolymers are confined in the dense cytoplasm and therefore experience strong geometric constraints on their equilibrium thermal fluctuations. To obtain a better understanding of the influence of confinement on cytoskeletal filaments we study the thermal fluctuations of individual actin filaments in a microfluidic in vitro system by fluorescence microscopy and determine the persistence length of the filaments by analyzing the radial distribution function. A unique feature of this method is that we obtain the persistence length without detailed knowledge of the complete contour of the filament which makes the technique applicable to a broad range of biological polymers, including those with a persistence length smaller than the optical resolution. Cell Motil. Cytoskeleton 66: 771-776, 2009. (C) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
