Complementary mesoscale dynamics of spectrin and acto-myosin shape membrane territories during mechanoresponse

The spectrin-based membrane skeleton is a major component of the cell cortex. While expressed by all metazoans, its dynamic interactions with the other cortex components, including the plasma membrane or the acto-myosin cytoskeleton, are poorly understood. Here, we investigate how spectrin re-organizes spatially and dynamically under the membrane during changes in cell mechanics. We find spectrin and acto-myosin to be spatially distinct but cooperating during mechanical challenges, such as cell adhesion and contraction, or compression, stretch and osmolarity fluctuations, creating a cohesive cortex supporting the plasma membrane. Actin territories control protrusions and contractile structures while spectrin territories concentrate in retractile zones and low-actin density/inter-contractile regions, acting as a fence that organize membrane trafficking events. We unveil here the existence of a dynamic interplay between acto-myosin and spectrin necessary to support a mesoscale organization of the lipid bilayer into spatially-confined cortical territories during cell mechanoresponse. The cell cortex that supports the plasma membrane contains spectrin, a protein that interacts with the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. Here, the authors analyze spectrin behavior during cellular mechanoresponse and membrane trafficking, and observe spectrin regulation by myosin-driven contractility.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Nature Communications

• Publication date

  2019-12-11

• Fields of study

  Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1101/872465PMID 33037189PMCID 7547731
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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