Biological complexity: function of cells shape changes (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, September 19, 2021, 18:36 (943 days ago) @ David Turell

Molecules "flow":

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-cells-mechanism.html

"This multidisciplinary collaboration combined modeling and experiments to describe a previously-unknown biological process. The teams discovered and characterized a new mechanism that a simple yeast cell uses to acquire its shape. They describe these results in a paper called "Cell patterning by secretion-induced plasma membrane flows" in the latest issue of Science Advances .

"When cells move or grow, they must add new membrane to those growth regions, says Vavylonis. The process of membrane delivery is called exocytosis. Cells also must deliver this membrane to a specific location in order to maintain a sense of direction―called "polarization"―or grow in a coordinated manner.

"'We demonstrated that these processes are coupled: local excess of exocytosis causes some of the proteins attached to the membrane to move ('flow') away from the growth region," says Vavylonis. "These proteins that move away mark the non-growing cell region, thus establishing a self-sustaining pattern, which gives rise to the tubular shape of these yeast cells."

***

"'Our work shows that patterns in biological systems are generally not static," says Rutkowski. "Patterns establish themselves through physical processes involving continuous flow and turnover.'"

Comment: Cell shape changes involve orchestrated molecular reactions, probably programmed.
More complexity in action.