Actin-based Motility
Cellular, Molecular and Physical Aspects

This book presents the cellular, molecular and physical aspects of production of force and movement by self-assembly of actin, one of the most abundant protein in cells, into cytoskeletal filaments. « Actin-based motile processes » are responsible for a very large variety of motile activities of cells in their physiological and pathological states, covering chemotactic locomotion, embryonic and metastatic cell migration, wound healing, eukaryotic cytokinesis and bacterial plasmid segregation, endocytic and phagocytic activities, as well as morphogenetic processes like axis patterning in early embryo, axonal growth in brain development, immune response and synaptic plasticity processes at the origin of learning and memory. The different chapters of the book describe how the multidisciplinary multiscale approaches taken in the recent years have explored the molecular and physical mechanisms at the origin of force and movement produced by actin self-assembly. The chosen topics show how advances have been made in the field of cell motility due to progress in live cell imaging, light microscopy, improved resolution in the structure of large protein assemblies, biochemical analysis and mathematical modeling of actin assembly dynamics and development of nanotechnologies allowing to measure forces in the range of pico- to nano-newton produced by actin assemblies.

This book presents the cellular, molecular and physical aspects of force and movement by the self-assembly of actin, one of the most abundant proteins found in cells, into cytoskeletal filaments. « Actin-based motile processes » are responsible for a large variety of motile activities such as chemotactic locomotion, embryonic and metastatic cell migration, wound healing, eukaryotic cytokinesis and bacterial plasmid segregation, endocytic and phagocytic activities, as well as morphogenetic processes including, axis patterning in early embryos, axonal growth in brain development, and the immune response and synaptic plasticity processes at the origin of learning and memory. The book describes how the recently undertaken multidisciplinary and multiscale approaches have explored the molecular and physical mechanisms at the origin of force and movement produced by actin self-assembly. The chosen topics show how advances have been made in the field of cell motility due to the progress in live cell imaging, light microscopy, improved resolution in the structure of large protein assemblies, the biochemical analysis and mathematical modeling of actin assembly dynamics and the development of nanotechnologies enabling us to measure forces in the range of pico- to nano-newtons produced by actin assemblies.

PART I. Cellular Aspects: 1. Elementary Cellular Processes Driven by Actin Assembly, Lamellipodia and Filopodia. J. Victor Small and Klemens Rottner.- 2. Coupling Membrane Dynamics to Actin Polymerization. Shiro Suetsugu and Tadaomi Takenawa.- 3. Endocytic Control of Actin-Based Motility. Andrea Disanza et al.- 4. Actin in Clathrin-mediated endocytosis. Marko Kaksonen.- 5. Actin Cytoskeleton and the Dynamics of the Immunological Synapse. Viveka Mayya and Michael Dustin.- 6. Actin-Based Motile Processes in Tumor Cell invasion. Matthew Oser et al.- 7. Actin-Based Chromosome Movements in Cell Division. Rong Li.- 8. Roles for Actin Dynamics in Cell Movements During Development. Minna Roh-Johnson et al.- PART II. Molecular Aspects: 9. Regulation of the Cytoplasmic Actin Monomer Pool in Actin-Based Motility. Pekka Lappalainen et al.- 10. From Molecules to Movement : In vitro Reconstitution of Self-Organized Actin-Based motile Processes. Marie-France Carlier and Dominique Pantaloni.- 11. The WASP-Homology 2 Domain and Cytoskeleton Assembly. Roberto Dominguez.- 12. Formin-mediated Actin Assembly. David Kovar.- 13. Visualization of Individual Actin Filament Assembly. Emmanuèle Helfer.- 14. Movement of Cargo in Bacterial Cytoplasm : Bacterial Actin Dynamics Drives Plasmid Segregation.- PART III. Physical Aspects: 15. Protrusive Forces Generated by Dendritic Actin Networks During Cell Crawling. Ovijit Chaudhuri and Daniel A. Fletcher.- 16. Mathematical and Physical Modeling of Actin Dynamics in Motile Cells. Anders E. Carlsson and Alex Mogilner.- 17. Force Production by Actin Assembly : Simplified Experimental Systems for a Thorough Modeling. Cécile Sykes et al.