Merging of ventral fibers at adhesions drives the remodeling of cellular contractile systems in fibroblasts.

ABSTRACT: Ventral stress fibers (VSFs) are contractile actin fibers dynamically attached to cell-matrix focal adhesions. VSFs are critical in cellular traction force production and migration. VSFs vary from randomly oriented short, thinner fibers to long, thick fibers that span along the whole long axis of a cell. De novo VSF formation was shown to occur by cortical actin mesh condensation or by crosslinking of dorsal stress fibers and transverse arcs at the cell front. However, the formation of long VSFs that extend across the whole cell axis is not well understood. Here, we report a novel phenomenon of VSF merging in migratory fibroblast cells, which is guided by mechanical force balance and contributes to VSF alignment along the long cell axis. The mechanism of VSF merging involves two steps: con

SUBMITTER: Narasimhan S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9770016 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature