Department of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, PO Box 26, Rehovot 76100, Israel
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2018 May 26;373(1747). doi: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0115.
Eukaryote cells have flexible membranes that allow them to have a variety of dynamical shapes. The shapes of the cells serve important biological functions, both for cells within an intact tissue, and during embryogenesis and cellular motility. How cells control their shapes and the structures that they form on their surface has been a subject of intensive biological research, exposing the building blocks that cells use to deform their membranes. These processes have also drawn the interest of theoretical physicists, aiming to develop models based on physics, chemistry and nonlinear dynamics. Such models explore quantitatively different possible mechanisms that the cells can employ to initiate the spontaneous formation of shapes and patterns on their membranes. We review here theoretical work where one such class of mechanisms was investigated: the coupling between curved membrane proteins, and the cytoskeletal forces that they recruit. Theory indicates that this coupling gives rise to a rich variety of membrane shapes and dynamics, while experiments indicate that this mechanism appears to drive many cellular shape changes.This article is part of the theme issue 'Self-organization in cell biology'.
真核细胞具有灵活的膜，使它们能够具有多种动态形状。细胞的形状对于完整组织中的细胞以及胚胎发生和细胞运动期间具有重要的生物学功能。细胞如何控制其形状以及它们在表面上形成的结构一直是生物学研究的热点，揭示了细胞用于使它们的膜变形的构建块。这些过程也引起了理论物理学家的兴趣，他们旨在基于物理学，化学和非线性动力学来开发模型。这些模型定量地研究了细胞可以采用的不同可能机制，以在其膜上自发形成形状和图案。在这里，我们回顾了理论工作，其中研究了一种这样的机制：弯曲膜蛋白与它们募集的细胞骨架力之间的耦合。理论表明，这种耦合导致了丰富多样的膜形状和动力学，而实验表明，这种机制似乎驱动了许多细胞形状变化。本文是“细胞生物学中的自组织”主题问题的一部分。
