Continuous self-repair protects vimentin intermediate filaments from fragmentation.

ABSTRACT: Intermediate filaments are key regulators of cell mechanics. Vimentin, a type of intermediate filament expressed in mesenchymal cells and involved in migration, forms a dense network in the cytoplasm that is constantly remodeling through filament transport, elongation/shortening, and subunit exchange. While it is known that filament elongation involves end-to-end annealing, the reverse process of filament shortening by fragmentation remains unclear. Here, we use a combination of in vitro reconstitution, probed by fluorescence imaging and atomic force microscopy, with theoretical modeling to uncover the molecular mechanism involved in filament breakage. We first show that vimentin filaments are composed of two populations of subunits, half of which are exchangeable and half immobile. We als

SUBMITTER: Tran QD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12184399 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature