Journal Club on Monday, August 6

For Journal Club on August 6, Eric Lewellyn presented the following paper:

Actin filament severing by cofilin dismantles actin patches and produces mother filaments for new patches. Chen Q, Pollard TD. Curr Biol. 2013 Jul 8;23(13):1154-62. PMID: 23727096.

Chen & Pollard Curr Biol 2013

“Sever, diffuse and trigger” model for actin filament turnover in actin patches. The 7 steps (numbers next to the arrows) are (1) clathrin coated pits bind adaptor proteins End4p and Pan1p, (2) short, diffusing actin filaments bind to End4p and Pan1p associated with coated pits, and (3) Arp2/3 complex interacts with these mother filaments and nucleation promoting factors to (4) initiate branching nucleation of actin filaments that promote elongation of the endocytic tubule. (5) After abscission of the vesicle, (6) cofilin severs actin filaments to generate a pool of short, diffusing actin filaments, some of which return to the cycle at step 2.