抄録
Fish keratocyte exhibits remarkable motility when migrating and changing crawling direction, driven by coordinated cycles of actin polymerization at the leading edge and adhesion to the substrate, balanced by forces acting on the cell membrane and the cytoskeleton. It is reported that assembly and disassembly of actin filaments are well coordinated to produce forces through a self-reorganization mechanism and depolymerization of the actin filament is initiated by the release of intracellular tension. Therefore, the release of intracellular tension could lead to change in drive forces and crawling direction. In this study, to observe change in the crawling direction due to perturbation of the mechanical condition of the actin filament, compressive strain was applied to the cells and we observed the process of change in the crawling direction. As a result, the crawling direction changed and mostly became perpendicular to the strain direction. Based on these results, we proposed the intracellular driving mechanism model that suggests the importance of the balance of the depolymerization between the actin filament at the leading edge and stress fiber at the posterior region of the cells to determine its crawling direction.
