Séminaire LabEx NUMEV

10e Séminaire de l’année 2024 !

ATTENTION ! Cet événement a lieu au campus Saint-Priest.

Les Séminaires NUMEV-MIPS sont ouverts à un large public d’étudiants, étudiantes, chercheurs et chercheuses de toutes disciplines, qui souhaitent en savoir plus sur les domaines de recherche actuels de la communauté NUMEV-MIPS (Mathématiques, Informatique, Physique et Systèmes) ou sur les possibilités de développer ses compétences et savoir-faire.

Flagella-like beating of actin bundles driven by selforganized myosin waves

Pascal Martin – Directeur de recherche au CNRS et responsable d’équipe à l’Institut Curie.

Wave-like beating of eukaryotic cilia and flagella—threadlike protrusions found in many cells and microorganisms—is a classic example of spontaneous mechanical oscillations in biology.
This type of self-organized active matter raises the question of the coordination mechanism between molecular motor activity and cytoskeletal filament bending. In this talk, I will describe a minimal molecular system in which polymerizing actin filaments in the presence of myosin motors self-assemble into polar filament bundles
that undulate spontaneously. The waveforms of these undulations resemble those of the flagellar beat in eukaryotic cells despite the different identities of the filaments and motor at work.
Bending waves are associated with motor density waves, indicating that the affinity
of myosin for actin depends on the curvature of the filament bundle. A physical
description of our observations highlights the importance of internal friction and
curvature control of motor activity, which provides a feedback mechanism for the
self-organization of large motor-filament assemblies.