Bending stiffness of Toxoplasma gondii actin filaments.

ABSTRACT: Actin is essential for the survival and pathogenicity of the Apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma gondii, where it plays essential functions in cargo transport, invasion, egress, and organelle inheritance. Recent work has shown that, unlike vertebrate skeletal muscle actin, purified T. gondii actin filaments (TgAct1) can undergo rapid treadmilling, due to large differences in the barbed- and pointed-end critical concentrations, rapid subunit dissociation from filament ends, and a rapid nucleotide exchange rate constant from free monomers. Previous structural analysis suggested that the unique assembly properties of TgAct1 filaments may be a functional consequence of reduced contacts between the DNAse-1-binding loop (D-loop) of a filament subunit and its adjacent, long-axis subunit neighbor. Be

SUBMITTER: Cao W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11786770 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature