Materials-Based Control of Actin Bundling

What has been achieved:

Our recent work has revealed two distinct approaches for controlling the bundling of actin filaments:

• Varying the molecular weight and concentration of depletant polymers.
• Assembling actin filaments inside biomolecular condensates composed of proteins that bind multi-valently to actin filaments.

Importance of Achievement:

Alignment of semi-rigid actin filaments to form bundles is a key step toward creating rigid structural elements that can withstand and apply tunable mechanical forces in actin-based materials.

Relationship of Achievement to IRG:

Now that we can control filament bundling, we are engineering fuel-driven bundling, a key step toward out-of-equilibrium actin-based materials.