Main description:

Since the discovery of actin by Straub in the 1950's and the pioneering work of Oosawa on actin self-assembly in helical laments in the 1960's, many books and conference proceedings have been published. As one of the most essential p- teins in life, essential for movement in organisms rangingfrom bacteria to higher eukaryotes, it is no surprise that actin has fascinated generations of scientists from many different elds. Actin can be considered as a "living treasure" of biology; the kinetics and thermodynamics of self-assembly, the dissipative nature of actin po- merization, the molecular interactions of monomeric and polymerized actin with regulators, the mechanical properties of actin gels, and more recently the force p- ducing motile and morphogenetic processes organized by the actin nanomachine in response to signaling, are all milestones in actin research. Discoveries that directly derive from and provide deeper insight into the fundamental properties of actin are constantly being made, making actin an ever appealing research molecule. At the same time, the explosion in new technologies and techniques in biological sciences has served to attract researchers from an expanding number of disciplines, to study actin. This book presents the latest developments of these new multiscale approaches of force and movement powered by self-assembly processes, with the hope to opening our perspectives on the many areas of actin-based motility research.

Contents:

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. Emmanuele 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. Cecile Sykes et al.