Skip navigation
SuUB logo
DSpace logo

  • Home
  • Institutions
    • University of Bremen
    • City University of Applied Sciences
    • Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences
  • Sign on to:
    • My Media
    • Receive email
      updates
    • Edit Account details

Citation link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:gbv:46-00104942-13
00104942-1.pdf
OpenAccess
 
copyright

The Dynamics of Dorsal Actin Waves


File Description SizeFormat
00104942-1.pdf24.08 MBAdobe PDFView/Open
Other Titles: Die Dynamik Dorsaler Aktinwellen
Authors: Bernitt, Erik 
Supervisor: Döbereiner, Hans-Günther 
1. Expert: Döbereiner, Hans-Günther 
2. Expert: Kruse, Karsten 
Abstract: 
The recent years have shown that waves of actin polyermization are central to the morphodynamics of cells. This thesis is dedicated to deciphering of the propagation mechanism underlying actin waves known as Circular Dorsal Ruffles (CDRs). While these ring-shaped undulations on the dorsal cell side have been known to the biological community for several decades the mechanism underlying their formation and propagation has remained a puzzle. It is the hypothesis of this work that CDRs can be described as waves that form and propagate in an active medium that is constituted by the actin machinery of the cell. The identification of the corresponding functional elements is the aim of this work. For this, the structure, morphology and dynamics of CDRs are investigated in detail and with a view that is guided by the typical structure of models of active media. Throughout the whole thesis, the FitzHugh-Nagumo system serves as a prototype model for the explanation of the mechanisms underlying the phenomena observed for CDRs on an abstract level. Novel results are presented regarding the identification of the processes of actin dynamics within CDRs and their compartmentalization. The systematic analysis of the dynamics of CDR wavefronts reveals that they exhibit a number of previously unknown phenomena, among them breathing modes, spiral waves, and collision annihilation. All these features are well founded in the framework of active media. Since the dynamics of CDRs strongly depends on the cellular morphology, a novel method for their investigation is developed in which cells are forced into disc-shapes via microcontact printing for a quantitative analysis of data of identically shaped cells. This framework allows for direct comparability to numerical studies, which reveals that stochastic elements in protein dynamics are key for the understanding of CDRs.
Keywords: circular dorsal ruffles, active media, cell motility, macropinocytosis, dorsal actin waves, actin waves
Issue Date: 15-Dec-2015
Type: Dissertation
URN: urn:nbn:de:gbv:46-00104942-13
Institution: Universität Bremen 
Faculty: FB1 Physik/Elektrotechnik 
Appears in Collections:Dissertationen

  

Page view(s)

37
checked on Jan 16, 2021

Download(s)

35
checked on Jan 16, 2021

Google ScholarTM

Check


Items in Media are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Legal notice -Feedback -Data privacy
Media - Extension maintained and optimized by Logo 4SCIENCE