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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 27: Physics of Cells III
BP 27.5: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 17. März 2011, 15:15–15:30, ZEU 250
Elastic interactions with the substrate can guide spatial re-organization during myofibril assembly — •Benjamin M. Friedrich1, Amnon Buxboim2, Dennis E. Discher2, and Samuel A. Safran1 — 1Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel — 2Group of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Myofibrils are the force generating units in striated muscle cells and represent a crystal-like state of acto-myosin organization with characteristic, sarcomeric architecture. The assembly of these myofibrils is a multi-step process that starts with the formation of stress fiber-like, sarcomeric premyofibrils near the cell-substrate interface. A prerequisite for the subsequent fusion of neighboring premyofibrils into nascent myofibrils is the inter-fiber registry of their respective sarcomeric periodicity. Here, we propose that substrate-mediated elastic interactions drive neighboring premyofibrils into registry. Elastic interactions may thus guide myofibril assembly and provide a link between acto-myosin organization and mechanical properties of an extra-cellular substrate. Our theory can account for the non-monotonic dependence of myofibrillogenesis on substrate rigidity that was observed in recent experiments (Engler et al., J. Cell Biol. 166, 2004).