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Updated: Jan 22, 2026

Analyses of Actin Dynamics, Clutch Coupling and Traction Force for Growth Cone Advance
Published on: October 21, 2021
Crosslinking actin networks produces compressive force
Rui Ma1,2, Julien Berro1,2,3
1Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Abstract:
Actin has been shown to be essential for clathrin-mediated endocytosis in yeast. However, actin polymerization alone is likely insufficient to produce enough force to deform the membrane against the huge turgor pressure of yeast cells. In this paper, we used Brownian dynamics simulations to demonstrate that crosslinking of a meshwork of nonpolymerizing actin filaments is able to produce compressive forces. We show that the force can be up to several thousand pico-Newtons if the crosslinker has a high stiffness. The force decays over time as a result of crosslinker turnover, and is a result of converting chemical binding energy into elastic energy.
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