Physical basis of spindle self-organization
Physical basis of spindle self-organization
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1409404111
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发表时间：
2014-12-30
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Needleman, Daniel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Brugues, Jan;Needleman, Daniel
细胞骨架形成各种稳定状态的亚细胞结构，这些结构由分子和能量的连续流动维持。了解这种自组织结构不仅对细胞生物学至关重要，而且对物理学提出了根本性的挑战，因为这些系统是活性物质，其行为与处于或接近平衡状态的物质截然不同。活性液晶理论已经发展到研究纯化组分体外系统中细胞骨架细丝的自组织。然而，目前还不清楚这些简化的方法对于理解生物结构有多大的相关性，因为生物结构可以由数百种不同的蛋白质组成。在这里，我们展示了一个适当构建的活性液晶理论对中期纺锤体（主要由微管和相关蛋白质组成的细胞骨架结构，在细胞分裂期间分离染色体）的行为产生了非常准确的预测。
The cytoskeleton forms a variety of steady-state, subcellular structures that are maintained by continuous fluxes of molecules and energy. Understanding such self-organizing structures is not only crucial for cell biology but also poses a fundamental challenge for physics, since these systems are active materials that behave drastically differently from matter at or near equilibrium. Active liquid crystal theories have been developed to study the self-organization of cytoskeletal filaments in in vitro systems of purified components. However, it has been unclear how relevant these simplified approaches are for understanding biological structures, which can be composed of hundreds of distinct proteins. Here we show that a suitably constructed active liquid crystal theory produces remarkably accurate predictions of the behaviors of metaphase spindles-the cytoskeletal structure, composed largely of microtubules and associated proteins, that segregates chromosomes during cell division.