Mechanical distortion of single actin filaments induced by external force: detection by fluorescence imaging.

ABSTRACT: Actin is a major component of the cytoskeleton that transmits mechanical stress in both muscle and nonmuscle cells. As the first step toward developing a "bio-nano strain gauge" that would be able to report the mechanical stress imposed on an actin filament, we quantitatively examined the fluorescence intensity of dyes attached to single actin filaments under various tensile forces (5-20 pN). Tensile force was applied via two optically trapped plastic beads covalently coated with chemically modified heavy meromyosin molecules that were attached to both end regions of an actin filament. As a result, we found that the fluorescence intensity of an actin filament, where 20% of monomers were labeled with tetramethylrhodamine (TMR)-5-maleimide at Cys(374) and the filamentous structure was stabil

SUBMITTER: Shimozawa T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2996168 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature