Morphology of Actin Assemblies in Response to Polycation and Salts

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• 作者：Hyuck Joon Kwon ; Akira Kakugo ; Kazuhiro Shikinaka ; Yoshihito Osada ; and Jian Ping Gong
• 刊名：Biomacromolecules
• 出版年：2005
• 出版时间：November 2005
• 年：2005
• 卷：6
• 期：6
• 页码：3005 - 3009
• 全文大小：162K
• 年卷期：v.6,no.6(November 2005)
• ISSN：1526-4602

文摘

F-actins are semi-flexible polyelectrolytes and can be assembled into a large polymer-actin complex withpolymorphism through electrostatic interaction with polycations. This study investigates the structural phasebehavior and the growth of polymer-actin complexes in terms of its longitudinal and lateral sizes in variouspolycation and KCl concentrations for a constant actin concentration. Our results show that the longitudinalgrowth and lateral growth of polymer-actin complexes, initiated by a common nucleation process, aredominated by different factors in subsequent growth process. This induces the structural polymorphism ofpolymer-actin complexes. Major factors to influence the polymorphism of polymer-actin complexes inpolyelectrolyte systems have been discussed. Our results indicate that the semiflexible polyelectrolyte natureof F-actins is important for controlling the morphology and growth of actin architectures in cells.