12: Cytoskeleton
- Page ID
- 16169
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When a eukaryotic cell is taken out of its physiological context and placed in a plastic or glass Petri dish, it is generally seen to flatten out to some extent. On a precipice, it would behave like a Salvador Dali watch, oozing over the edge. The immediate assumption, particularly in light of the fact that the cell is known to be mostly water by mass and volume, is that the cell is simply a bag of fluid. However, the cell actually has an intricate microstructure within it, framed internally by the components of the cytoskeleton.
- 12.1: Introduction to the Cytoskeleton
- As the name implies, the cytoskeleton acts much like our own skeletons in supporting the general shape of a cell. Unlike our skeletons though, the cytoskeleton is highly dynamic and internally motile, shifting and rearranging in response to the needs of the cell. It also has a variety of purposes beyond simply providing the shape of the cell. Generally, these can be categorized as structural and transport.
- 12.2: Intermediate Filaments
- “Intermediate filaments” is actually a generic name for a family of proteins (grouped into 6 classes based on sequence and biochemical structure) that serve similar functions in protecting and shaping the cell or its components. Interestingly, they can even be found inside the nucleus. The nuclear filamins, which constitute class V intermediate filaments, form a strong protective mesh attached to the inside face of the nuclear membrane.
- 12.3: Actin Microfilaments
- Microfilaments are also known as actin filaments, filamentous actin, and f-actin, and they are the cytoskeletal opposites of the intermediate filaments. These strands are made up of small globular actin (g-actin) subunits that stack on one another with relatively small points of contact.
- 12.4: Microtubules
- Microtubules are made up of two equally distributed, structurally similar, globular subunits: α and β tubulin. Like microfilaments, microtubules are also dependent on a nucleotide triphosphate for polymerization, but in this case, it is GTP.
- 12.5: Microtubule Organizing Centers
- Microfilaments do not have any kind of global organization with respect to their polarity. They start and end in many areas of the cell. On the other hand, almost all microtubules have their (-) end in a perinuclear area known as the MTOC, or microtubule organizing center and they radiate outward from that center. Since the microtubules all radiate outward from the MTOC, it is not surprising that they are concentrated more centrally in the cell than the microfilaments.
- 12.6: Transport on the Cytoskeleton
- While it can be useful to think of these cytoskeletal structures as analogous to an animal skeleton, perhaps a better way to remember the relative placement of the microtubules and microfilaments is by their function in transporting intracellular cargo from one part of the cell to another. By that analogy, we might consider the microtubules to be a railroad track system, while the microfilaments are more like the streets.
- 12.7: Actin - Myosin Structures in Muscle
- The motor proteins that transport materials along the acting microfilaments are similar in some ways, such as the globular head group that binds and hydrolyzes ATP, yet different in other ways, such as the motion catalyzed by the ATP hydrolysis. Much of the f-actin and myosin in striated and cardiac muscle cells is found in a peculiar arrangement designed to provide a robust contractile response over the entire length of the cell. The sarcomere is an arrangement of alternating fibers of f-actin.
- 12.8: Cytoskeletal Dynamics
- In the early development of animals, there is a huge amount of cellular rearrangement and migration as the roughly spherical blob of cells called the blastula starts to differentiate and form cells and tissues with specialized functions. These cells need to move from their point of birth to their eventual positions in the fully developed animal. Some cells, like neurons, have an additional type of cell motility - they extend long processes (axons) out from the cell body.
- 12.9: Cell Motility
- There are a number of ways in which a cell can move from one point in space to another. In a liquid medium, that method may be some sort of swimming, utilizing ciliary or flagellar movement to propel the cell. On solid surfaces, those mechanisms clearly will not work efficiently, and the cell undergoes a crawling process. In this section, we begin with a discussion of ciliary/flagellar movement, and then consider the more complicated requirements of cellular crawling.
Thumbnail: Image of a human cell showing microtubules in green, chromosomes (DNA) in blue, and kinetochores in pink (Public Domain; Afunguy).