Authors:

Srikushal Muthamsetty

Date Created:

Not specified

Course Title:

Professor:

Not specified

About Paper:

The homeostatic cortical actin array of plant epidermal cells plays an important role in fundamental processes, including intracellular transport, secretion, cell expansion, and cytoplasmic streaming. The array is consisted of single actin filaments, which can also be organized together with the binding of actin crosslinking proteins (ACPs) to form an actin bundle. In experimental studies, live-cell imaging has been used to track the dynamic properties of both actin filaments and bundles at high spatiotemporal resolution. With small molecule inhibitors and genetic mutations, prior studies have shown a robust dynamic steady state of the cortical actin array, with individual filaments showing stochastic dynamics while bundles remain relatively stable. Computational efforts focused on the plant actin cytoskeleton are lacking, however, as prior studies primarily focused on investigating filament or bundle dynamics in animal cells. Using an agent-based model, we reproduced the steady state condition of the cortical actin array in plant cells with both single filament and bundle dynamics, which can help illuminate a novel observation that may be difficult to do experimentally. We found that increasing the binding rate of ACPs, decreasing the unbinding rate of ACPs, and increasing the ACP density all promoted bundle formation. On the other hand, increasing the unbinding rate led to rapid bundle disassembly. This research tackles the challenge of computational modeling of both single filament and bundle dynamics in the homeostatic cortical actin array of plant epidermal cells. Keywords: Actin; ACP; Bundle; Filament

Source:

Purdue University / 2025

Topics:

No topics listed

Co-authors:

Srikushal Muthamsetty