Robustness of the microtubule cytoskeleton self-organisation
Robustness of the microtubule cytoskeleton self-organisation
- Event time: 1:00pm until 2:00pm
- Event date: 14th May 2018
- Speaker: Aleksandra Plochocka (School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
You and I are but a collection of trillions of cells. Why are we not falling apart? Consider this question on an inter-cellular level: to hold the cells together, the stickiness protein (E-cadherin) has to be delivered to the cell boundaries, where it is biologically relevant. This delivery is done along a network of highways (the microtubule cytoskeleton) via stochastically moving molecular motors. The cytoskeleton network self-organises to adjust to the functions of the cell and its developmental stage. Recently it was discovered that in epithelial cells cytoskeleton self-organisation is governed primarily by cell geometry [1]. In this talk, I will present our recent work. Using a probabilistic toy model and stochastic simulations, we show that cytoskeleton self-organisation is independent of most of the biological parameters. This means that the following result is robust: it is the cell geometry that determines our tissue properties.
[1] Gomez, Chumakova, Bulgakova, Brown, Nature communications 7 (2016): 13172.
About Condensed Matter lunchtime seminars
This is a weekly series of informal talks given primarily by members of the institute of condensed matter and complex systems, but is also open to members of other groups and external visitors. The aim of the series is to promote discussion and learning of various topics at a level suitable to the broad background of the group. Everyone is welcome to attend..