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Updated: May 29, 2026

Reactivation of Demembranated Cell Models in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
Published on: May 6, 2022
Extremely low polymerizability of a highly-divergent Chlamydomonas actin (NAP)
1Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan. minoura@bio.chuo-u.ac.jp
Abstract:
Novel actin-like protein (NAP) is a highly divergent actin expressed in Chlamydomonas. With its low sequence similarity, it is uncertain whether NAP can polymerize into filaments. Here I assessed it by ectopically expressing enhanced green fluorescent protein-tagged NAP (EGFP-NAP) in cultured cells. EGFP-NAP was excluded from stress fibres but partially co-localized with endogenous actin in the cell periphery. In fluorescence recovery after photobleaching experiment, turnover rate of EGFP-NAP was similar to the estimated diffusion rate of monomeric actin. Therefore, EGFP-NAP likely accumulates by diffusion. These findings suggest that NAP has extremely poor ability to polymerize.
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