Chemical and Biological Physics Guest Seminar

Date:
04
Thursday
April
2019
Lecture / Seminar
Time: 11:00
Title: Active vesicles as model systems for cell motility
Location: Perlman Chemical Sciences Building
Lecturer: Dr. Thorsten Auth
Organizer: Department of Chemical and Biological Physics
Details: Forschungszentrum Julich
Abstract: The cytoskeleton is a highly dynamic three-dimensional network of polar filament ... Read more The cytoskeleton is a highly dynamic three-dimensional network of polar filamentous proteins and molecular motors. It provides structural stability for biological cells and it also generates and transmits mechanical forces. For example, in mesenchymal cell motility actin filaments polymerize at their plus ends, which exerts pushing forces on the cell membrane. Here, we present a generic two-dimensional model for an active vesicle, where self-propelled filaments attached to semiflexible polymer rings form mechanosensitive self-propelled agents. We find universal correlations between shape and motility. To probe the internal dynamics of flexocytes, we study the effect of substrate patterning on their mechanical response. The active vesicles reproduce experimentally observed shapes and motility patterns of biological cells. They assume circular, keratocyte-like, and neutrophil-like shapes and show both persistent random and circling motion. Interestingly, explicit pulling forces only are sufficient to reproduce this cell-like behavior. Also for the reflection of the vesicles at walls and the deflection of their trajectories at friction interfaces we find parallels to the behavior of biological cells. Our model may thus serve as a filament-based, minimal model for cell motility.
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