Abstract
A suitable motility model reconstituted from lion-muscle contractile proteins should offer a powerful tool for analysing the molecular events in cell motility. Actomyosin thread has been thought to be such a model. As far as non-muscle motile systems are concerned, however, only a very limited number of experiments have been done in this direction1,2. No direct measurement of the tension produced by non-muscular actomyosin thread has been reported in spite of its importance for quantitative studies. We now report that a segment of actomyosin thread of Physarum polycephalum can generate a considerable amount of tension, which is a function of the micromolar concentration of ATP. The maximum isometric tension was as high as 10 g cm−2 at 10 µM ATP.
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Matsumura, F., Yoshimoto, Y. & Kamiya, N. Tension generation by actomyosin thread from a non-muscle system. Nature 285, 169–171 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1038/285169a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/285169a0
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