Sponsored Content by Thermo Fisher Scientific - SoftwareOct 26 2023Reviewed by Emily Magee Actin filaments are essential to the eukaryotic cell’s cytoskeleton, as they regulate cell shape and allow cells to polarize, protrude, and move.1,2 Evidence was found in the late 1990s that actin holds wave-like dynamics, and filaments propagate within cells.2‘Actin waves’ occur in various cells, such as Dictyostelium cells, leukocytes, neurons, osteosarcoma cells, melanoma, oocytes, and embryos.
The team employed these technologies to understand the role played by the Arp2/3 complex in nucleating branches of actin filaments, observing how the direction of the branches correlates with the direction of wave propagation and the orientation of filaments about the substrate-attached cell membrane on which the waves propagate.
The researchers calculated the angle between the direction of the substrate-attached cell membrane the mother or daughter filaments, to understand the relation of the geometry of branch nucleation to the membrane on which the waves are propagating. Through studying live-imaging data, it was demonstrated that VASP, an elongation and nucleation factor, appears to collaborate with the Arp2/3 complex, producing part of the filaments from which the Arp2/3 complex nucleates branches.
“Altogether, the quantitative analysis of branch organization in traveling actin waves reflects the ordered progression in space and time of an actin network from nucleation to depolymerization,” the authors determine in Structure.3 Thermo Fisher leads the industry in FIB-SEM technology, and this enables researchers to discover subsurface structural detail via the making of specific cuts with a FIB and subsequently imaging the exposed surface with a high-resolution SEM.
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