QLS Seminar - Tuesday, 14 July at 10h00 - Actin Force-Generation in Synthetic Biological Materials: Active Droplets and Beating Tails

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

Dear All,

Tomorrow, Tue. 14 July at 10h00 Adrielle Cusi (Brandeis University, 
Waltham, MA, USA) will give a seminar titled:

*"Actin Force-Generation in Synthetic Biological Materials: Active 
Droplets and Beating Tails"*

Actin is a vital cytoskeletal protein that functions as a molecular 
polymerization motor. Within living cells, actin filaments generate 
mechanical forces (without any molecular motors) through a dynamic 
balance of polymerization and depolymerization in a process known as 
treadmilling.
This machinery allows cells to crawl and reshape themselves. Pathogens 
like the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes also exploit this mechanism, 
hijacking the host cell’s actin to build propulsion tail networks that 
drive them forward. Our works reconstruct this treadmilling mechanism 
within synthetic biological materials. By transitioning from complex 
cellular environments to controlled synthetic systems, we explore how 
biomimetic force generation leads to emergent non-equilibrium phenomena.

In this talk, I will present two complementary approaches that exploit 
actin treadmilling within synthetic biological materials. First, I will 
discuss how local actin filament growth alters the phase-separation 
dynamics of DNA-nanostar condensates, driving emergent structural 
behaviors from droplet reorganization to fragmentation. Second, I will 
show how leveraging this same motor mechanism allows us to engineer 
microscopic "beating tails" driven purely by polymerization. These 
findings collectively demonstrate how simple, localized molecular 
mechanisms can be leveraged to drive complex macroscopic behaviors, 
offering a new playground for exploring emergent active matter physics.

Indico: https://indico.ictp.it/event/11394 
<https://indico.ictp.it/event/11394\>

The seminar will take place in the *Common Area, 2nd floor, old SISSA 
building* (Via Beirut, 2).

You are all most welcome to attend!

Best regards,

Erica

Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-22404623 (NEW PHONE NUMBER)
www.ictp.it/research/qls.aspx
e-mail:qls at ictp.it