National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and Kanazawa University Kien Xuan Ngo, Noriyuki Kodera Taro Q.P. Uyeda
Cofilin has an actin filament severing activity. We found by high speed AFM real time imaging that severing preferentially occurs at or near a boundary between a cofilin-bound cluster and the neighboring bare zone. In this video, seven different image sequences from different filaments and experiments were merged. Conditions: F buffer containing 1 mM ATP and 75 nM cofilin (no tag), except in sequence 3 in which cofilin concentration was 150 nM. Red, blue, and green arrowheads indicate severing in half helices in cofilin clusters, in a bare half helix immediately neighboring a cofilin cluster, and in bare zones more than half a helix away from cofilin clusters, respectively. White arrowheads: cofilin clusters. The width of the imaged field: 200 nm in sequence 1, and 440 nm in sequences 2-7, Z-scale: 0–12 nm.
(2015.06.18)